


Down By the Lake

by wonderfulwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Community: spn_summergen, Explicit Language, Gen, Mike and Asher from Something Wicked, OCs - Freeform, Show level violence, character with panic attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5301128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderfulwrites/pseuds/wonderfulwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’d stay away from the water. Things down there you don’t want to get near.”</p><p>Written for just_ruth in the 2015 SPN Summergen Fic Exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2015 SPN Summergen Exchange for just_ruth, and inspired by this prompt: "Ben Braeden is on a hike with the local scout troop; joining up with another troop that includes Mike and Ash Sorenson (Something Wicked) - when a campfire story comes to life, can the boys who've been "touched by a Winchester" save the day? (yes!)" 
> 
> Many thanks to claudiapriscus for the quick turn around on the beta read.
> 
> Edited for grammar and punctuation, but the changes from the original posting are minor and mostly unnoticeable. Chapters will be posted as I edit.

“We’ve been up here a couple times before,” Scott said, pulling his very expensive BMW X5 up next to the other X5 in the driveway, the same exact model as Scott’s but slate gray instead of black. “The fishing is awesome, and it’s not as well known as some of the other lakes, so there aren’t as many tourists. Too far out in the boondocks, I guess.”

“Cool,” Ben said for lack of anything better to say. A large cabin loomed in front of them, with a big front window and red flannel curtains and a stone chimney rising above it. There are trees everywhere and blue sky above them and Ben gets that people find this fun, staying in a cabin in the woods for days at a time, fishing and hiking and being outdoorsy, but this was very much not the way he had wanted to spend his first weekend of summer break. He’s finding it nearly impossible to drum up any enthusiasm.

Scott threw the car into park and cut the engine. But instead of getting out like Ben was trying to do, he shifted towards Ben, one arm draped over the steering wheel, and said with complete sincerity, “I’m glad you came, Ben.”

Ben froze, one foot already out the door. 

“I think you’ll have fun.” Scott sounded hopeful and desperate all at once, and Ben felt kind of bad for not wanting to be here. “Harold’s stepson Asher is your age, and his brother Mike is going to be a sophomore in college next year. And hey, as the only two guys in the family, we need to stick together, right?”

Ben hoped the smile he gave Scott didn’t look as awkward as it felt. “Yeah. Right.”

“That’s my boy,” Scott said proudly and clapped Ben on the shoulder before he opened his own door and hopped out.

Ben sighed and followed.

It wasn’t that Ben didn’t like Scott. He did for the most part. It was just that he was one of those guys who liked to talk about his stock portfolio and microbrews and how many hours he had clocked at the gym. His favorite band was the Dave Matthews Band (the biggest strike against him, in all honesty), and he lived and breathed college football, was nothing but an obsessive fanboy for the Buckeyes between September and January. He popped the collars on his polo shirts and wore his hats backwards and all of his sunglasses hung around his neck on Oakley straps. He was what a bro looked like when it grew up, and as much as his bro-ness got on Ben’s last nerve sometimes, he also treated Aunt Abby and the girls really well, and he always helped out Ben’s mom when she got a flat tire or when she was sure the plumber was trying to overcharge her. In the end, those were the important things, how he treated his family, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hang out with the guy or anything.

Since Ben had started high school and got a spot on the baseball team, Scott always wanted to do guy stuff with him. Mom said it was because Scott lived in a house full of girls – three now, all a year apart - and had been deprived of what she had called the heteronormative myth of the perfect son. She also said Ben should have mercy upon him and hang out with him a little, but Ben had definitely not expected ‘a little’ to become a three day camping trip with Scott and his frat brothers and their kids.

And yet, here he was. With Scott. And the frat brothers. And the kids.

Scott chattered on while they pulled their bags out of the back, going about how they’d just hang out and swim and grill today while they waited for the other two guys to show up. Tomorrow would be the big fishing day; Barry knew a guy on the other side of the lake with a boat and blah blah blah. Ben helped Scott slide the giant cooler full of ice and beer and steaks out of the car and lug it up the steps, making noises of interest when it seemed appropriate.

Inside, the cabin was just one big great room - living room and kitchen and dining area all together, with a giant, flat screen TV (which was pretty cool) and oversized furniture around a big stone fireplace. The walls were all unfinished wood, and the curtains over the sink were red flannel to match the front window, and there was an honest to God deer head hanging over the mantle.

Ben had thought places like this only existed in the movies. Seemed he thought wrong.

A tall, skinny guy was standing in the kitchen, slapping ground beef into patties. 

“Harold!” Scott bellowed. Ben winced. It was a happy bellow, but still.

The guy in the kitchen looked over his shoulder, peering over the tops of his glasses as they maneuvered the cooler over the threshold and dropped it just inside the door. He grinned and waved with a meat-covered hand. “Don’t come too close. I’m covered in animal carcass.”

Ben wrinkled his nose, because, ugh, gross, but Scott laughed in delight and gave Ben another manly clap on the shoulder. “Ben, this is Harold. Harold, Ben. Harold is the pediatrician. His stepsons are the ones who are your age.” 

“Oh,” Ben said awkwardly. “Hi.” 

Ben had technically met all these guys back when he was younger and still lived in Cicero, but he didn’t really remember any of them. Scott had been BFFs forever with Harold and couple of other guys since college; they had all gone to Ohio State and had pledged the same fraternity and had been best men in each other’s weddings, but Ben had never bothered to pay much attention to the details before this. At this point he was just hoping he could remember everyone’s names. 

Harold gave him a pleasant smile. “Nice to meet you Ben. I’d shake your hand, but…” He held up his meat-covered hand again and wiggled his fingers. “The boys are down at the lake. They’re expecting you if you want to join them after you put your stuff away.”

“Yeah, um, okay,” Ben said, thinking that standing around awkwardly with kids he didn’t know was preferable to standing around with adults he didn’t know. “Where am I…?” He lifted his bag.

“Upstairs. Pick a bed.”

Ben muttered his thanks and went up. It was one big room with three sets of bunk beds and a single window. Green flannel curtains gave the room a Coke bottle green glow, and the bunks had a green flannel blankets to match. The bunk closest to the window already had stuff on the top and bottom – Harold’s stepsons must have already claimed those – so Ben threw his bag on the bunk on the opposite wall. As someone who had always had his own room, he wasn’t too excited about sharing the room with strange kids, but he could make it through three days. He just hoped Harold’s kids were cool, or at least, not total freaks.

Ben took the stairs back down two at a time. Harold was still making hamburger patties, and Scott was leaning against the counter with a bottle of his favorite microbrew in his hand, telling Harold about how awesome the golf course he had played on in Miami had been. He gave a jaunty wave and called out to Ben to have fun as he passed them on the way out.

Relief surged through Ben as soon as the screen door slammed closed behind him. 

The trees loomed over the back yard, casting the whole yard in cool morning shade. One of those big brick grill setups dominated the space and there was a picnic table nearby. Three paths branched off into the trees, one directly to the left, another directly to the right, and the last straight ahead, with a little sign at its entrance. A white arrow and little blue lines, scalloped like waves, told him the lake was down that way.

Ben took the path with the sign.

It was worn bare, and the quiet of the woods was filled with the chatter of birds and the whisper of the wind. He wished he had his iPod, but like his cell phone, it had been taken away for the weekend. _Do something different_ , his mom had said, and _get some fresh air_ and _interact with actual human beings for once_. Which was unfair. He interacted with people all the time; it was called _social_ media for a reason.

Mostly, though, he didn’t like being so… disconnected. Not from his friends so much, but what if something happened to his mom? This was the first time he’d slept away from home since the home invasion and the car accident, and he was worried enough without being able to call home and check on her. _We can’t live our lives in fear_ , his mom had said more than once, and it wasn’t that he disagreed with her, but, just what if? 

“Yeah, Ben, what if?” she had replied the last time they had argued about this, standing against the kitchen counter with a dishtowel over her shoulder and the sink filling with hot water for the dishes behind her. “What if I get hit by a bus crossing the street? Or what if I fall in the shower and hit my head? There’s always a ‘what if’, and we can’t let ‘what if’ run our lives. So you’re going to go with Scott and be a normal kid. Have some fun, catch some fish, do whatever normal boys when their moms aren’t around to police them.”

Normal? Normal kids didn’t get kidnapped by fairy tale monsters or watch their mom’s boyfriend get their necks snapped by strange people breaking into their house, so Ben wasn’t sure anymore what being normal was like. Joining the baseball team should have been enough. Can’t get more normal than that. Expecting him to go away for three days without any contact with the outside world was just a step too far; anything could happen back in the real world, and he wouldn’t even know.

The path widened and the trees gave way finally, and the lake was suddenly there, dark and wide and deep. The far shore was a line of green in the distance, and sunlight gleamed on the water, glittering and shifting as tiny waves danced across its surface. 

Two kids with longish, boy band blond hair were on the shore. One was wandering in the shallow water, his pants rolled up to his knees. The other was lounging against one the logs around a fire pit, legs out stretched and crossed at the ankle, face turned up to the sun.

Ben almost turned back; he could easily escape before he was noticed and head back to the cabin, maybe take a walk along one of the other hiking trails, but he’d have to spend three days with these guys, so he should probably try not to be a crazy recluse. Ben stuffed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and moved forward, bracing himself for human interaction. 

The kid reclining on the shore looked up when Ben’s shadow fell over him. He threw his hair out of his eyes with a little toss of his head, and said, “Hey. You must be Ben.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’m Mike. The freak wandering around in the freezing cold water is my brother, Asher.” Mike cupped one hand around his mouth and shouted, “Asher! This is Ben. Say hi!”

Asher didn’t even look up, just gave a distracted wave of his hand. 

“Harold’s your dad, right?” Ben asked.

“Stepdad, but yeah,” Mike said easily, like it was a mistake he often corrected. “And Scott is your… uncle?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” Mike tilted his head to the side and considered Ben like he was sizing him up. Ben shifted uneasily under his scrutiny. “So you’re in what? 9th grade? 10th?”

“I’ll be in 10th.”

Mike grinned. “Cool. Asher’ll be in 9th.”

Ben knew that it was his turn to ask a question, and he shifted from foot to foot, trying to come up with something, anything that didn’t make him sound too socially awkward. “You’re in college, right?”

“Yep. Just finished my first year at the University of Michigan.” Mike shrugged like it was no big thing, but he didn’t quite pull it off.

“Cool.” And with that, Ben had officially exhausted his store of small talk.

They fell into an awkward silence. Ben looked out over the lake, feeling out of place. He didn’t quite know what to say or do next, especially with an older kid like Mike. He used to be pretty good with people, but since the accident, well, it just wasn’t as easy as it used to be. There was stuff out there, evil stuff, stuff that could get you at any time, and people just went about their daily lives without ever noticing. How do you relate to someone who doesn’t know? What do you even say?

Ben turned abruptly and walked away, down the shore, frustrated. Why did he have to be here, with these people whom he didn’t know and who didn’t know what was really going on in the world? Why did he have to small talk and smile and pretend?

Ben kept close to the water’s edge, close enough that the wet sand made squelching noises under his feet. The lake was clear enough for the first few feet to show the sandy bottom and little clumps of algae, and tiny rolling waves lapped along the shore, washing up sticks and leaves and other debris here and there. 

The warmth of the sun was nice at first, then it became not so nice as sweat began to trickle down the side of his face and gather at the small of his back. When it got warm enough, the cold water would be tolerable, and they’d be able to go swimming, which was starting to sound pretty good right now. Ben stopped to pull off his hoodie and tie it around his waist and saw that he had wandered pretty far down the shore, far enough that Mike and Asher were little more than silhouettes in the distance. 

Panic rattled through him; the other guys were total strangers, but he’d rather be with them, than down here, with just the water and trees and strange wilderness sounds around him. His breath caught, and his heartbeat surged and he had to get back to the other two _right now_.

Ben turned back, putting a bit of hustle in his step. The distance between him and the others seemed infinite, long and insurmountable, just miles and miles and miles away, and he had the sudden, irrational feeling that he was being watched, that at any minute something was going to lunge out of the woods and snatch him up. A new wave of panic struck him, and he had to get back, he had to get back before the thing in the woods caught him. Ben put on an extra burst of speed, his lungs tight in his chest-

“You’re a freak,” Mike said, and Ben was back, back with people, not alone, but coming up to the other boys where they argued on the shore. For a minute he thought that Mike was talking to him, but no, no, he was saying that to Asher, who had come out of the water. “Throw that back.”

Ben stopped on the edge of the fire pit and just breathed, so very grateful that it hadn’t been a full blown panic attack. He hadn’t had one of those in a couple of months and hoped to keep it that way. He just hoped the other kids hadn’t noticed his near freak out, because the only thing worse than a panic attack was the embarrassment afterwards, when people started looking at you differently, started keeping their distance and making excuses about why they couldn’t hang out anymore, or worse, started treating you like you were broken and irredeemably fragile. 

But Mike and his brother were pretty focused on their argument, and didn’t even seem to be aware of Ben standing on the periphery, taking deep breaths like he’d just run a marathon.

“No. I’m keeping it.” Asher said, twisting his body to hide whatever it was he wanted to keep. His pants were still rolled up to his knees, and little beads of water were tricking down his legs.

“You’re not.” Mike’s face was screwed up in disgust. “That thing is not coming into the cabin with us.”

“Fine. I’ll keep it outside.”

“No, you won’t. 

“What is it?” Ben asked, a little curious now that the panic was subsiding. His voice even sounded fairly stable, so that was good.

The kid whirled, and thrust a long, green tinged thing in his face.

“Dude! I found a femur!”

And sure enough, that was a huge ass bone the kid was waving around, covered in green and black lake goo. 

Ben stepped back, vaguely disgusted. “That’s not human, is it?”

“Nah,” Asher said, eyeing his find proudly. “It’s probably bear or something.”

“Seriously, man, throw it back,” Mike said, getting to his feet and brushing off the back of his shorts. “It’s gross.”

“It’s not gross, Mike. It’s _biology_ ,” Asher said. “I’m gonna go show Harold.”

And with that he was gone, trotting back towards the cabin.

“Oh, for…” Mike muttered to himself, and with a frustrated huff, jogged after his brother.

Panic tried to surge up again, but Ben stomped it down, determined not to freak. The trees and water and sky were just that. There was no one watching him, there were no monsters, no one was going to lunge out of the trees and break anyone’s neck. There was no reason to be afraid.

Ben hurried after the other boys anyway.

***

“You found this in the water?” Harold was saying as Ben came jogging into the backyard a few feet behind Mike. Asher on the back porch with Harold and Scott and another guy with a beer gut and an Ohio State hat pulled down over his eyes. Harold was holding the bone delicately by both ends and turning it this way and that, and Ohio State hat was looking at Asher with a disgusted little twist of his lip.

“Yeah.” Asher sounded concerned now, too. “I thought it might be bear or something.”

“It’s not, kiddo,” Harold said gently. “It’s human.”

Asher’s eyes got big and round and started brimming with tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I-“

“Hey, Asher. Hey, it’s okay.” Harold put his hand on Asher’s shoulder, and suddenly Ben just really liked Harold. “Someone probably drowned years ago, and some of the remains are just washing up on the shore. Go wash your hands, and I’ll deal with this. Okay?”

Asher sniffled. “Yeah. Okay,” he said and bolted into the cabin.

“Mike, would you…?” Harold jerked his head in the direction Asher had gone.

“Yeah. I got it.” Mike jogged up the steps and followed Asher inside, while Harold jumped down from the porch and disappeared around the side of the cabin, leaving Ben standing there with Scott and the dude in the Ohio State hat. 

“That kid’s such a freak,” Ohio State hat muttered, making freak sound as bad as any swear word Ben had ever heard.

Okay. Ohio State Hat was a dick. Duly noted.

Scott gave an awkward little laugh. “Uh, yeah. So, Tommy, this is my nephew, Ben. Ben, this is my buddy Tommy.”

Tommy peered down his nose at Ben. “You’re the baseball player, right?”

“Yep. He even pitched one game,” Scott said, as proud as if Ben were his own kid and not his wife’s nephew.

“Huh.” Ohio State Hat took a swig of his beer. His eyes flickered over Ben with a critical eye. “Kinda scrawny, aintcha, Stretch?”

Ben shifted uneasily and glanced at Scott. He’d grown like six inches in the past year, and he knew he was all skinny and gangly, his knees and elbows sharp and pointy. His mom had assured him that he would eventually put on weight to go with the height, but it didn’t mean he didn’t feel all weird and self-conscious about it. And he really didn’t need some douchebag frat bro pointing it out, either. 

Scott gave Ben a pained sort of smile; clearly he knew how Ben felt about it because Mom and Aunt Abby had big mouths. “Why don’t you go see what Mike and Asher are up to?”

Ben nodded, grateful for the out, and hurried up the porch steps and past the two men.

He found Mike and Asher upstairs. Asher was hunched over on one of the bottom bunks, shoulders slumped and head hung low, his boy band hair hanging in his eyes, and Mike and perched next to him, talking to him in a quiet voice.

Mike stopped abruptly as soon as he entered, gave Ben a look that made him a little worried he was going to get punched in the face. “What?”

Ben shifted awkwardly “Nothing, man. I just…” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to hang around that dick any longer than I had to.”

Mike relaxed a little, his punch-you-in-the-face vibe gone. “Tommy?”

Ben nodded. 

“Yeah, well, join the club.” He turned back to his brother. “Hey. Let’s go take a ride to the Gas N’ Sip. I want a slushy.”

Asher sniffled and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand, but he didn’t respond.

Mike bumped his shoulder again. “Come on. We’ll get a slushy, take a ride around the lake, see what’s going on at the beach.”

“The one with the volleyball court?” Asher asked in a small voice.

“Yeah. You up for it?” 

Asher sniffled again and nodded.

“Cool.” Mike glanced up at Ben, hesitated briefly, then said, “You wanna come?”

Ben hesitated because Mike hesitated, but he also wasn’t going to make friends by hanging around the cabin alone. “Yeah, okay.”

And that’s how he found himself in the back of Harold’s SUV with a red slushy in his hand and Led Zeppelin pouring out of Mike’s iPod. When the next song was AC/DC, Ben decided Mike was pretty cool. He was still out on Asher, but then, Asher had just been walking around with a giant human bone in his hands, so he probably wasn’t at his best right now. He did seem perkier though, asking his brother if they could rent a canoe at the beach and grumbling when Mike said they didn’t have time.

But it was a moot question. No one was renting canoes at the beach because there was no one at the beach. It was completely deserted except for a maintenance guy doing something or another over by his truck.

“I take it this isn’t normal?” Ben said, squinting against the sunlight bouncing off the sand. It wasn’t a big beach, just a stretch of yellow sand and the volleyball court, a hut for canoe rentals, and a building nestled up against the surrounding tress, probably the bathrooms.

Mike threw the car in park and cut the engine. “No. Usually this place is hopping by now. You guys wait here a minute,” he said and jumped out of the car.

Mike made a beeline for the maintenance worker, and Asher lasted all of thirty seconds before he was scrabbling at the seatbelt and throwing himself out of the SUV to follow his brother.

Ben briefly debated whether he should follow or not, and finding no good reason to stay behind, let himself out of his seatbelt and jogged across the parking lot to catch up.

“…drowned here yesterday,” the guy was saying. He was wiping his hands on a rag, his eyes roaming from one boy to the next from under the brim of his hat. His nametag said his name was Sal, and there was a gleam in his eyes that under normal circumstances would have made Ben step back slowly. “The beach is closed until they find his body.”

“Someone drowned?” Ben said.

“Sure did.” Sal nodded thoughtfully as he tucked his rag into his back pocket. “Kid about your age. It happened in plain sight. Went down and didn’t come back up again. Right out there.” He pointed out into the water, where there was a line of red and white buoys, demarking the swimming area. He sighed forlornly and shook his head. “Damned shame, too.”

He turned his crazy eyes back on the boys. “I’d stay away from the water. Things down there you don’t want to get near.”

“Like a ghost or monster or something?” Asher’s eyes were wide. He was buying it wholesale, but Ben was a little more skeptical since the guy was pretty much radiating crazy.

“Maybe.” The guy shifted from foot to foot, hitched his pants up by the belt. He was really getting into it now. “Maybe not. Whatever it is, it likes to drag ‘em down deep so no one ever sees them again. It’s been happening a lot in the last few years, but this month’s been particularly bad.” He leaned forward, dropped his voice like it was a juicy secret. “My granny, she came from the old country, and she figures it a grindylow, but she’s getting up there in years, so…”

He leaned back with a shrug. “Might could be a ghost, tough.”

“Are you serious?” Mike was glaring at the guy with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns. “If that’s true, why haven’t we heard about the drownings before? We’ve been coming up here for three years now. And if the beach is closed while they look for the body, why isn’t there police tape or signs or something?”

Sal didn’t seem at all bothered by Mike’s hostility or his completely logical questions. “You think the town wants it getting out? The local economy needs the tourists. Can’t have ‘em cancelling their reservations because people are afraid of some kind of monster drowning.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Whatever man. Guys, come on, let’s go.”

“Then why are you warning us?” Ben asked. “I mean, you’d be out of a job, too, if word got out.”

The guy smirked, and yeah, he was enjoying the hell out of this. “A man’s gotta have a clear conscience to sleep at night, don’t he? It just ain’t right, letting people go to their deaths.”

“Don’t listen to his jackass,” Mike grabbed Asher by the arm and started hauling him away, despite Asher’s furious protests. “Come on, Ben. He’s just yanking your chain.”

“I ain’t yanking nothing, kid. I’m just trying to do my Christian duty and warn you.”

“Dude, whatever. Come on, you two. Let’s go.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” the guy called as Mike marched them back across the parking lot.

The piled back into the car in silence. Mike started the car again, and whipped out of the parking space at warp speed.

“Do you think that bone I found belonged to someone who got drowned by the monster?” Asher said in a small voice once they were out on the main road again.

“Dude,” Ben said. “That’s grim.”

Asher shrugged. “Well, it could be.”

Mike scoffed. “Really, Ash? That guy was just trying to scare us. He was totally getting off on it.”

“Well, he did a good job,” Asher said, and sipped forlornly at this slushy. 

“Whatever,” Mike said and cranked up the music.

But Ben thought about the way he’d felt earlier, down by the lake, and wondered.

***

“Ugh,” Asher said, when they pulled up in front of the cabin. There was another SUV parked there now, a red Pathfinder with an Ohio State sticker on the bumper. “Barry and the creepy twins are here,”

“Don’t call them creepy,” Mike said, cutting the engine. “They’re just kids.”

“Yeah. Creepy kids,” Asher said with no little relish.

Mike scowled at his brother. “You’d be creepy, too, if you’d been in the back seat during a car wreck and watched Mom die in front of your eyes.”

“Dude, shut up,” Asher said. “Don’t say things like that about Mom.” 

“Well, don’t be a jerk to little kids,” Mike said, and punched his brother in the arm.

“Ow!” Asher rubbed at his arm. “You’re the jerk.”

Inside, the last and final bro was talking to Scott in the kitchen, and the kids Mike and Asher had been arguing about were sitting at the table, chowing down on sandwiches and Cheetos. Mike and Asher headed for the sandwich fixings laid out on the counter, but Scott waylaid Ben so he could introduce him to his last BFF.

“We’ve heard a lot about you, Ben,” Barry said as he gave Ben a hearty handshake. He was big guy, and if Ben remembered correctly, he was the one who had actually played ball in college. “Those are my boys, Owen and Jake.” 

He waved towards two redheaded boys at the table. They were identical twins, maybe seven years old, and they were dressed alike in Ohio State t-shirts and cargo shorts. Ben felt kind of bad for them, being dressed to match like that. He wondered how Barry told them apart.

“Mike, will you boys take them for a walk or something when everyone’s done with lunch?” Barry asked, twisting off the top of one of the microbrew Scott had handed him. “They’ve been holed up in the car all morning.”

Mike looked up from the epic-sized sandwich he was making, glanced at the twins, who were, honest to God, eating in synch, and nodded. “Yeah, sure,” he said with not a lot of enthusiasm. As much as he didn’t think Asher should call them creepy, he sure didn’t seem too excited about hanging out with them. “I’ll take them up to the playground.”

“Great!” Barry said enthusiastically, and disappeared out onto the back porch with Scott where, presumably, the adults were all hanging out and drinking beer.

Ben was the last to make his own sandwich of a size that rivaled Mike’s, then joined the other kids at the table. He sat down between Mike and one of the redheaded boys. The kid eyed him like Ben was a bug skittering across the floor.

Ben was a little insulted, but he was a little kid, and Ben was going to try to make nice. “Hi. I’m Ben.”

The kid didn’t say anything, just shared a look with his twin across the table before they both went back to eating in synch. Ben had the irrational thought that this seven-year-old kid had just judged him and found him wanting.

He looked at Asher, who nodded and mouthed the word creepy over his sandwich.

Ben couldn’t say he disagreed.

***

Mike had a map of all the hiking trails around the lake, and after lunch, they took the walking trail on the left. Apparently the playground was between their cabin and the next, about a mile away. Asher whined about walking in the heat, but the two creepy kids followed without complaint, in step with each other. They had both found long sticks and poked at stuff as they walked, also in synch, and sometimes one pointed out stuff to the other, and they would nod at each other without saying a single word.

Asher was right. These kids were seriously creepy.

“They’re, like, communicating telepathically or something,” Asher muttered to Ben as the paused yet again so Mike could relieve the twins of their poking sticks and usher them along the path. “I’ve never actually heard them talk.”

“Asher!” Mike snapped as he passed his brother. Now both boys were looking at Asher as if he were the bug skittering across the floor.

“What?” Asher said balefully. “It’s true.”

“It is not,” Mike said as he steered the boys past them. “You’ve heard them talk. And stop being a jerk.”

“Okay, fine. They never say normal things,” Asher whispered once everyone was moving again, and Mike and the twins were far enough ahead that they wouldn’t hear him. 

“Did they really see their Mom die?” Ben asked, knowing he shouldn’t pry but too curious not to.

“Yeah. They got hit at an intersection by a semi a couple of years ago. She bled to death before the ambulance even got there. It was actually kind of freaky, because for like a month before hand, they started refusing to get into the car. They would throw full-blown fits and stuff, screaming and crying and saying their mom was going to die. They did it once when our families were going to dinner together. It was epic.”

The two boys were slowly falling back from Mike. One of them stopped and picked up another stick. He started poking at something in the foliage. As soon as the other noticed his brother had stopped, he went over to investigate. They were totally consumed by their poking as Ben and Asher passed.

“They knew their mom was going to die?” Ben whispered when he thought they might be out of earshot.

Asher shrugged. “I don’t know, but once, I lost my math book and they said it was under the bed at my friend’s house.”

“Were they right?”

“Yeah.”

“Dude,” Ben said.

Asher nodded and grinned, his eyes bright. “I know, right?”

Up ahead, Mike stopped and turned, saw that the twins had been distracted by something that needed poking again.

“Could you, like, give me a hand with this, Ash?” Mike said in frustration as he stomped back towards the twins. 

The boys looked up at his approach. They clenched their fists and screwed up their faces in determination, ready to fight to the death to keep their poking stick.

“Why do you guys keep stopping?” Mike asked barely masking the frustration in his voice.

“We don’t want to go to the playground,” one said.

“Why not?” Mike asked.

“The monster lives there,” the other said, with perfect, reasonable calm, just like every psychic kid in every horror movie ever.

Ben shivered as a feeling of dread crawled over and through him, setting in the pit of his stomach with a twisting, heavy weight. He was suddenly profoundly aware of how quiet it was this way; there were no birds singing, no chitter of insects. There was no wind, not even a soft breeze; the treetops still and silent in its absence. He looked back along the trail uneasily, and that irrational feeling of being watched rose again. The warnings of the maintenance guy were suddenly ringing in his ears.

Ben was, right there and then, completely and thoroughly convinced that there really was a monster somewhere down that trail, watching them and waiting for the right moment to strike. And wouldn’t that be an awesome told you so to his mom? He’d told her taking away his cellphone was a bad idea. 

Mike licked his lips and glanced at Ben and Asher, then past them, up the trail where they had been heading. Ben wondered if Mike had just realized how still and quiet things seemed that way, whether he felt the same itching, horrific feeling of being watched as Ben did.

Asher frowned and followed his brother’s line of sight; Ben could see the moment that he noticed something seemed off as well.

“What monster?” Mike asked.

“The one that wants to kill us all,” the twin said. 

“Well, we don’t want that, do we?” Mike’s voice was strained. The twins shook their heads. “So, let’s go swimming. It’s probably warm enough now.”

The twins both grinned like Christmas had come early and ran back down the trail screaming with joy. 

“Mike?” Asher said, his voice trembling.

Mike’s glanced at Ben, then gave the fakest of fake smiles and shrugged fake-casually. “Don’t want to run into a monster, right?”

Asher also glanced at Ben, and gave the fakest of fake laughs. “Yeah. A monster.”

Ben just rolled his eyes. “Don’t quit your day jobs, guys” he said and started off after the twins. 

He’d rather go swimming, anyway.

***

The creepy twins kept up their creepiness for the rest of the day, though they eased back on the creepy for a while they were splashing around in the lake like normal kids. The water was freezing, and Ben had hesitated to go in first, not just on account of the cold, but also because of the maintenance guy’s warning about the lake and the twins’ insistence that there was some monster up the trail. 

But the sun was warm and bright, and the twins were happily splashing each other in the water, not all that worried about the monster, and Ben just felt stupid for getting so worked up. Sure, the supernatural was real, there were things out there that wanted to eat you or worse, but what are the chances of running into some kind of monster again? How many monsters could there possibly be?

Ben waded in and between the brisk chill of the water and the game of Marco Polo Mike started, he soon forgot to worry. It didn’t take long to adjust to the temperature of the lake, and it was actually kind of fun, splashing around with the other kids, even the creepy twins. They played Marco Polo for a long time, then practiced handstands in the water, and tried to teach the twins how to float. When the twins got bored and returned to their favorite past time of poking at things with sticks, they all headed back up to the cabin. The adults were starting dinner– hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill – and afterwards, everyone put on warm clothes and trooped back down to the lake to build a bonfire in the fire pit and roast marshmallows.

And that’s when things got really uncomfortable, and didn’t have anything to do with ghosts or monsters or creepy telepathic twins.

“So, Mike,” Tommy said while all the kids were making their way through the second bag of marshmallows. His face was bright red and his voice slurred from drinking pretty much all day. “How’s Michigan treating you?”

Tension snapped through everyone, hard and tight. Ben hunched down, stomach twisting. He wasn’t sure of what was going on, but whatever it was, he was more than happy to go unnoticed.

“Good, sir,” Mike said politely, even though his jaw was clenched his jaw and his grip had tightened on the stick in his hand. “I had a really good first year.”

Tommy scoffed. “Michigan,” he said like it offended him on a deeply personal level.

“Tommy, knock it off,” Scott said.

“What, Scott? Harold’s letting his kid go to _Michigan_. Someone ought to say something.”

“Lay off, Tommy,” Harold said. “Mike chose the school he wanted, and I’m certainly not limiting his choices based on a stupid football rivalry.”

“Stupid, Harold?” Tommy said, scandalized. He crumbled his beer can in one hand and tossed it over his shoulder where it hit the water with a distant plunk. “I cannot even believe the words coming out of your mouth. You ain’t been the same since you married that woman. Ain’t none of you the same since y’all had kids. We’ve always gotta bring the freaky brats on our fishin’ weekends and no hard liquor, and we can’t stay out too late ‘cause of our wives, and now you’re letting the one normal kid in the lot go to Michigan…”

“Oh shut up,” Barry said. He jumped up and curled his fists and planted his feet, ready for a fight, which seemed to be way more intense than the situation called for. “For God’s sake, grow up already. College is over. It’s been over for fifteen years! It’s time to frickin’ move on.”

“Oh, and you’re the worst one, Barry. With those two little freaks and their matching outfits and their creepy little-“

“Shut your mouth,” Barry took a step forward to loom over Tommy. “Don’t you say a word about my kids, Tommy, or so help me-“

Harold and Scott got to their feet, slow and cautious, like they were trying not to spook a wild animal. 

“Hey, guys,” Scott said reasonably, sidling up to Barry. “I think you two need to cool it a little.”

Both men ignored him. Tommy peered up at Barry from under the bill of his hat, eyes glittering in the firelight. He smiled slow and malicious. “Or so help you what? You going to fight me, Barry?”

As soon as he said that, Harold turned to Mike. “Mike,” he said quietly. “I think you should take everyone back to the cabin.”

Ben was on his feet immediately, more than ready to get away from this train wreck. Mike nodded and started gathering up the twins, who were watching their father with wide eyes.

“I might.” Barry was saying, taking another threating step toward Tommy, getting up in his personal space now.

Tommy laughed, mocking. “Like you have the-“

Barry launched himself at Tommy with a cry of rage. They both went over the log in a tangle of arms and legs, grunting and swearing. 

“Everyone back to the cabin. Now!” Harold yelled and he and Scott climbed over the log and tried to pry apart the two men. 

“Asher, come on.” Mike snatched up one twin, grabbed the other by the hand, and headed for the cabin with long, hurried strides. Asher wasn’t far behind, and neither was Ben. He wasn’t used to violence, he’d been raised by a mother who had taught him that using his fists was not the way to settle conflict, and he was happy to get away from their brawling. It was scary and primitive in a way that the hypothetical lake monster would never be.

“What just happened?” Ben asked when the sounds of the scuffle had faded behind them, and Mike’s pace had slowed to something more reasonable.

“Tommy’s an asshole, and Barry can’t hold his liquor, that’s what just happened,” Mike shifted the twin in his arms, who had his skinny arms and legs wound around Mike like an octopus. The other one was hustling along at his side, sniffling. “I don’t even know why they keep letting him come.”

“Tommy’s always like that,” Asher added. “Just mean. He hates all of us, like a lot.”

“He thinks we ruined their big bromance or whatever, but it’s just that everyone else grew up, and he’s still stuck in drunk frat boy mode. And he gets Barry going _everytime_. Here, Owen. I’m going to set you down now.”

The path had spilled them out into the back yard of the cabin. Mike peeled the clinging twin away and set him on the ground. He immediately sidled up to his brother and clung, and Mike led them up the back steps, one twin clinging to him and the other clinging to his brother. Asher followed him up, and Ben was close behind, even had his foot on the bottom step, when he heard rustling off to his right.

Ben paused and peered into the darkness. He heard the other boys inside the cabin, footsteps moving here and there, the murmur of voices, the sound of the refrigerator opening, but off in the darkness he heard the rustling again, and somewhere in the shadows, he saw movement. Something big was out there, on the trail to the playground, moving around in the trees.

Ben removed his foot from the step and moved toward the sounds. This was the moment when he should start running, when he should be heading away from the mysterious dark shape not towards it, but he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop himself from taking another step forward, towards the trail and its shadows.

 _Ben_ , someone said from the shadows. _Ben. This way._

Ben knew that voice. He had heard when he was eight, praising him, telling him he was brave for helping those other kids get out of the basement. He’d heard it two years later, telling him to eat as scrambled eggs were pushed onto his place, explaining how a carburetor worked as he leaned over the slate-gray puzzle of a car engine, the sunlight warm on the back of his neck. He associated that voice with safety, with big black cars that rumbled around you, thrumming into your very core, with his mom smiling and happy and a bone deep sense of home.

He’d wanted to hear that voice again for so, so long.

“Dean?” The name just slipped out of his mouth, simple and easy, both known and not known. Ben’s heart was pounding, and his feet were moving again, pulling him closer to the darkness. “Dean, is that you?”

 _Ben_ , said the voice. _Ben, come here_. The shadows shifted again, and something gleamed out there, just a flash of cat’s eye gold, there for a second and gone again, and Ben took another step forward, needing to see what it was-

“Ben? What are you doing?”

Ben started, jerked back from the shadows, from that voice, and found Asher by his side, practically on top of him. Ben hadn’t even heard him approach.

“Hey, are you okay?” Asher asked.

“What?” Ben felt lightheaded, disoriented. “I don’t… I thought I heard-” 

He looked out into the trees again, into the shadows, and for a brief second, he remembered the eggs, the engine and the sunlight on the back of his neck, and then it was gone.

“What?” Asher asked, a little fearful, but also curious, curious and concerned. He peered into the darkness, trying to see what Ben was looking at.

“Nothing.” Ben shook his head. “I thought I heard an animal or something in the trees, but it was nothing.”

“Oh.” Asher’s glanced uneasily into the shadows and back again, gave Ben the weakest, most uneasy smile he had ever seen. “Well, I don’t hear anything. We should go inside.”

“Yeah.” Ben said and stuck close to Asher as they climbed up the stairs. 

He did not look back when he heard the rustle and shift of the trees behind him again.

***

In the middle of the night, Ben woke to crying. 

He was confused at first, disoriented. He could hear that kid a few cages down sniffling, probably because the monsters were coming back, and he was probably next, since they had gone for the little girl in the cage next to his last time, and he was so scared and cold and he wanted his mom-

The light came on, and Ben was slammed back into reality. He wasn’t in the basement with the other kids, waiting for the changeling mother to come feed on them. He was in the cabin by the lake, and he was cold because he had kicked off his blanket, and the crying kid was one of the creepy twins, huddling close to his brother as he sobbed.

Mike was crouched next to their bunk, squinting in the harsh light, his hair all mussed up from sleep. “Hey, man. What’s wrong?”

The twins were both on the bottom bunk. The one was crying quietly and didn’t seem inclined to stop, so the other answered for him, his arms wrapped around his brother. 

“We heard Mommy.”

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“She was calling our names,” the twin said, rubbing his brother’s shoulder absently. “She wanted us to go into the water with her.”

“It wasn’t Mommy,” the other twin whispered, voice hitching with tears. “Not Mommy. A monster. And it’s mad.”

Ben was too rattled from his own nightmare to shrug off the creepy kids’ words as the same. What had happened on his way back to the cabin was still with him, the shifting of the darkness, the voice calling out to him, telling him to come. He got up and dug a canister of salt out of his bag because screw it. They could think he was crazy if they wanted, but there were like a million horror movies where people ignored the warning of creepy psychic kids and died for it, and Ben didn’t plan to be that stupid. He should have salted the window and door the minute he got back.

“What are you doing?” Asher asked as Ben popped the spout and flipped open the curtain of the room’s single window.

“Salt keeps out monsters,” Ben said, as he laid a line of salt out along the sill. “It should keep the monster away.”

“Really?” the non-crying creepy twin said, his voice hopeful while his brother’s tears slowed and quieted.

“Yep. Monsters can’t cross a line of salt,” Ben looked out into the darkness from behind the salt line. He couldn’t see anything, but he had the skin-crawling feeling that something could definitely see him. He let the curtain fall closed and turned to the bedroom door.

“Why? Is it magic salt?” a twin asked.

“Nope. Just regular old table salt.” Ben crouched by the door and poured a line along the crack. “But salt is pure, and monsters can’t cross it.”

When Ben stood and turned, he found himself the center of attention. The twins were watching him with utter awe, but Asher was watching him with a distressed crease in his forehead, and Mike had him pinned with a hard, suspicious stare.

Ben threw back his shoulders and marched back to his bed, where he stowed his salt canister in his duffle before climbing back under the blanket. He was half expecting questions or maybe even to get called crazy or something, but he wasn’t all that surprised when those things didn’t happen.

“Cool.” Mike turned to the twins. “See? Nothing will bother us again tonight. You going back up to your bunk?” 

The one holding his brother shook his head. “No. Owen doesn’t want to sleep alone.”

“Okay,” Mike said, and helped them get settled, then flicked off the light and climbed back into his bunk.

Ben could practically feel the fear and tension in the room as they all lay there in the dark, listening to the silence of the night and the uneasy breathing of the other boys. This was like being that basement when he was eight, waiting for the monster to come back, to take another kid and make him scream.

“Will the salt really work?” Asher asked after a few minutes.

“Yeah.” Ben had never seen proof of it himself, but he knew. He knew, and his whole body relaxed, the twisted lump of fear in the pit of his stomach dissolving. “Yeah, it’ll work.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Mike said. “Now everyone shut up and go to sleep.”

Ben wasn’t sure what the others did, but he fell asleep fairly quickly, and mercifully didn’t dream of anything at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Watery, gray light was seeping in around the edges of the curtains when Ben woke. He stretched and rolled onto his side, kicking off the blanket as he went. He was alone; all the other bunks were empty, and the cabin seemed eerily quiet. It was unsettling, made him feel lost and isolated, so he hustled out of bed. 

He shivered when his feet hit the cold floor, and his breath was puffing out in little clouds. He knew it was supposed to be chilly here in the mornings, but this just seemed excessive for June. He hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and the single sweatshirt he had brought, layered up two pair of socks on his feet, and hurried downstairs.

The creepy twins were eating cereal at the table. They were wearing matching red and white striped shirts under matching blue hoodies today. Mike and Asher were out on the back porch, having a furiously whispered conversation, and just past them, Ben could see the three adults huddled together at the mouth of the path down to the lake having their own secret meeting.

He sort of wanted to go out and find out what was going on, but he was odd man out here and wasn’t sure of how welcome he’d be in butting into anyone’s conversation. So he sat down at the table with the twins and poured himself a bowl of cereal.

“What’s going on?” Ben asked, pouring milk over his Cheerios.

“Mr. Tommy didn’t come back last night,” said the twin on his right. He was poking morosely at his cereal, Fruit Loops by the soggy, multicolored look of it. 

“Oh.” He wasn’t too broken up about it - the guy was a dick - but it was concerning. 

“The monster got him,” said the other twin. He wasn’t even touching his cereal, just staring into the bowl, his whole face twisted with anxiety and fear.

And _that_ was why it was concerning. 

Ben looked down into his own cereal, his appetite fizzling away. He gamely took a bite, anyway, and grimaced at the bland, cardboard taste. There was a reason why he stopped asking his mom to buy Cheerios years ago, and sudden lack of appetite wasn’t helping things.

The twin playing with his cereal let out a world-weary sigh and put down his spoon. “Who did you hear?”

Ben paused with a mound of cheerios half way to his mouth, suddenly the sole focus of the intense, laser-sharp stare of two very psychic, very creepy kids.

“What?” Ben said.

“You heard the monster. Owen wants to know who it sounded like.” The twin – this one was Jake, then – studied him solemnly. “It’s okay. You can tell us. We heard it, too.”

He almost lied, almost laughed them off, but they were serious. Deadly, horror movie psychic kid serious, and, horribly, trying to be kind and gentle with him. And Ben just couldn’t seem to lie.

He dropped his spoon back into his cereal, his gut heavy and twisting. 

“I don’t remember,” he told them. There had been a voice, that voice, the one he had forgotten, and a name, he’d known a name, he’d said it out loud, but now he couldn’t recall it, couldn’t even summon a tip-of-the-tongue sense of it. There had been that glimpse of the scrambled eggs, and of leaning over an engine in the sunlight. It had only been for a split second, but he’d remembered. “I thought I did, for a minute, but not anymore.”

The twin across the table – Owen – nodded solemnly. “That’s why it likes you best.”

And with that disturbing, terror-inducing statement, the twins turned back to their cereal and began to eat in their strange, synchronized way.

Ben stared at them, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the morning cold. His appetite was completely gone; there was no way his stomach was going to tolerate food right now. He got up and poured the Cheerios down the disposal, saw the sky through the kitchen window, heavy with dark clouds, saw the trees looming menacingly over the cabin, and shivered.

Something bad was going to happen on this trip, something worse than the changelings. He could feel it.

Just then there were heavy footsteps on the back porch, and the adults filed back in, Matt and Asher on their heels. Scott and Harold headed for the coffee with a strange, anxious silence, while Barry went over to his sons. His left eye was bruised and puffy, ringed by a dark purple shiner, and his bottom lip was swollen and scabbed. Tommy had gotten him good.

He gave everyone else a very wide, very nervous smile. “Everyone done with breakfast?” he asked with transparent cheer. Everyone was clearly not done with breakfast. The twins were still working on their soggy cereal, both of them in the middle of synchronized chewing, but Barry clapped his hands together and rubbed them with false glee. “Great! Then how about a walk up to the playground, huh?”

None of the kids, Ben included, were excited about this plan. They all just looked at Barry, unmoved by his false excitement and cheer. From the looks on their faces, Ben was, for a split second, almost positive that Mike and Asher were as convinced as he and the twins were that there was a monster out there somewhere.

“Okay, Daddy,” Jake finally said, resigned. “If you want to.”

“Awesome. You boys go get your shoes on. We’re leaving in ten.”

_You’re going to get us all killed_ , Ben thought darkly, irrationally, but went up stairs for his shoes, anyway.

***

The day was dreary and damp. Without the sun, it felt like February, and despite his sweatshirt, the cold sunk through Ben’s skin and into his bones, settling deep. The trees loomed above them, grim and heavy. Nothing else seemed to be moving today, not even a breeze; the only noise was the pad of their feet on the trail, the rustle of clothing, and the occasional sound of Barrys’ voice, pointing things out to the twins.

Ben wondered with vague panic if this was what it would feel like to be the last person on earth

Ben wasn’t sure what Mike had said to Barry, but, much to Ben’s relief, he had convinced him to give up on the playground and take the other trail, the one that split off to the right. The walking trails ran parallel to the lakeshore, and this one took them past a small picnic area for hikers and past another cabin, silent and empty. Barry and the twins walked in the lead, each boy holding one of their father’s hands. They were subdued and silent, their interest in sticks and poking things with those sticks was nowhere to be seen. Mike walked not far behind, hands tucked into his Michigan hoodie, while Asher and Ben fell in last. 

Asher was sticking suspiciously close, making Ben feel a little claustrophobic. It felt like he wanted to talk, but Ben wasn’t about to make the first move, still too rattled by the conversation he’d had with the twins at breakfast. The tension was making him uncomfortable, though, and he had started to wonder if he could come up with a good excuse to go back to the cabin to get warm, when Asher finally came out with it.

“So what was the deal with the salt last night?”

Right. The salt. Ben should have expected that. 

He shrugged, tried to play it cool. “It was just something to calm down the kids.”

Mike glanced at them over his shoulder, and Ben tensed, expecting mockery, but Mike said nothing, and quickly looked away.

“Well, that worked, but seriously, why’d you have it.” Asher nudged Ben with his elbow in a friendly way but it only made Ben tense. “You can tell me. I really do want to know. I’m not going to laugh at you or anything.”

Ben wasn’t sure how to explain it, not even to himself. The missing time between the home invasion in which his mom’s boyfriend Matt died and the car accident after that nearly killed his mom, the jumbled memories, and the stuff he and his mom knew afterward – how to line the doors and windows with salt, how to hide the devil traps under rugs, how to always keep a bottle of holy water around just in case – he just couldn’t make sense of it. They had never considered that they were crazy, no matter what the rest of the world might say, just accepted the knowledge for what it was. But Ben never could shake the idea that he had forgotten something important, and once Ben had asked his mom if she felt that way, too.

“Everyday,” she’d said, but they had never really figured out what.

Ben knew all that would sound utterly insane if he tried to explain it, wasn’t even sure Asher was the person he wanted to explain it to, so he said, “I read about it on the internet.” It was the answer he’d come up with should he ever be asked this question, and Ben glanced sidewise at Asher to see how he reacted. “I’m kinda superstitious, I guess.”

Asher didn’t laugh, as promised. He didn’t even look particularly freaked out. If anything, he looked a little disappointed.

“Oh,” was all he said. 

Ben relaxed somewhat, feeling as if he had just cleared a huge hurdle, and they walked in silence for a few minutes more, though Ben was fairly sure that Asher was building up to another question from the way he kept glancing at Ben. 

“So have you noticed there’s no wind?” he said at last.

Not the question he was expecting, but yeah, Ben had noticed. “Yeah, and no bird song or insects buzzing. Just like the trail yesterday.”

Asher looked up into the cloud-heavy sky. “I don’t like it.”

“No,” Ben said. “Me neither.”

In front of them, Mike glanced over his shoulder again and again remained quiet.

Barry and the twins turned down a path that brought them out at the lake. The lake was absolutely still, flat and almost black, reflecting the clouds above like a mirror. They turned and walked along the water’s edge, sand crunching under their feet. Asher was shooting sideways glances at Ben again, and seriously, the kid was killing him with the build up.

“Dude, spit it out,” Ben said exasperated. “What do you want to know?”

Asher did this twitching thing, blinking rapidly and jerking his shoulders back. “What? Nothing. I-“

“Just ask him, Ash,” Mike sounded just as exasperated at Ben. “You’re freaking him out.”

“Fine,” Asher said, dropping his eyes and folding in on himself in embarrassment. He mumbled something Ben didn’t quite catch, but he caught the words _lake_ and _salt_ jumbled in there somewhere.

“Oh, for-“ Mike stopped and turned on them. “He wants to know if you knew about the thing in the lake before you came here.”

“I want to know?” Asher said, incredulous, and kicked his brother in the shin. “You butthead! Don’t make me look like the creepy one.”

Mike shoved at Asher, not too hard but enough to force him back a step. “I’m not. You’re doing it to yourself.”

“I just… I always take salt with me,” Ben said. “Just in case.”

Mike crossed his arms and loomed over Ben, even though they were more or less the same height. “Just in case of what?” 

Ben shifted from one foot to the other. “Um…”

“Did you almost get eaten by monsters once, too?” Asher asked, eyes wide.

Mike ran a hand over his face. “Dude.”

Ben looked between them. On the one hand, he was more than happy with the idea of not being alone with a couple of psychic twins in thinking that there was something not right here at the lake, but on the other, it was entirely crazy to think there was a monster out here, and Ben wasn’t always sure that he wasn’t crazy.

“When I was eight, these things called changelings stole me from my bedroom and replaced me with a creepy double that nearly killed my mom.” Ben just blurted it out, surprising himself, and apparently the other boys, by his sudden confession. But it felt good, somehow, not to have to keep it in anymore. “So you can think I’m crazy or whatever, but that’s what happened. And there’s other stuff out there, too. Ghosts and demons and things. That’s why I have the salt.”

There was utter silence from the other boys. Ben looked away so he didn’t have to see them trying to think of a way to make a strategic retreat, just in case some of his crazy got on them. It had happened, though, he knew it happened. Katie remembered it, and so did some of the other kids who were there. He’d asked them all once, sent them texts not long after the car crash just to make sure he hadn’t imagined what had happened in the basement of that house. Asher and Mike could think him crazy if they wanted, but it was real. Monsters were real, and the monster that had called out to Ben and the twins the night before, it was real, too.

It’s just… he hated this part, the rejection part.

“When we were younger,” Mike said, his words slow and cautious, “there was this thing in a black robe. It came through the window, and when it opened his mouth…” Mike trailed off.

Ben looked up in surprise. Mike and Asher wore identical looks of terror, as if the memory was almost too much to revisit.

“I almost died,” Asher said, picking up where his brother had left off. “I woke up and it was hovering over me. It opened its mouth and it was glowing, right? Its mouth, I mean. And it sort of… inhaled me. I was in a coma, but there were these guys…”

“Two of them,” Mike said. “They were staying at the hotel my mom owned back then. They had this big black car, you know, one of those old muscle cars. I pretended to be asleep when it came back for me, and they… they killed it.”

“A big black car?” Ben said. He remembered that car, had ridden in it. It was the most awesome car he has ever seen, and he remembered how they told him how well he’d done, helping those other kids get out.

“Yeah. Sam and Dean,” Mike said. “Those were their names.”

“One was really tall?” Ben didn’t really remember their names anymore, nor their faces. He just had a vague impression of them, both tall, but one taller, the big black car, the way it smelled of leather and oil and safety, the way they saved him, him and the other kids and made sure the mother changeling and her changeling children couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Tall with lots of hair.”

Elation was building in him, elation and relief because he wasn’t alone. “I think those were the guys who saved me. That part’s all kind of a blur, and I don’t remember their names, but… yeah, that sounds like them.” He exhaled in a rush, something inside him unfurling in a way it hadn’t in years. “So, I’m not crazy.”

Mike offered him a smile in return. “No, man. You’re not crazy, because if you are, we are, too.”

“Good.” Ben looked away, out over the water, to the tree line on the other shore. “Because I really do think there’s something weird going on here.”

“You mean the weather?” Asher said. “It’s super weird.”

“It’s not really the weather, though is it?” Mike said. “It’s how quiet it is. Yesterday it was like this on the trail, but today it’s everywhere. And Jake and Owen-“

“Are totally psychic.” Ben said. “Like, _The Sixth Sense_ and _The Shining_ psychic.”

“Yeah,” Mike said with a breathy laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“So do you think there’s a ghost or a monster or something out here?” Asher was looking around, at the sky, at the trees, at the lake like he expected to be pounced on at any second. “Like the maintenance guy said?”

“I don’t know.” Mike shrugged. “I mean, nothing has actually happened to anyone so far.”

“Except for Tommy,” Asher said.

“We don’t know that, though, do we? He was drinking pretty heavily. He could have just passed out in the bushes somewhere. He’s done it before.” Mike hit his brother lightly on the arm with the back of his hand. “Remember when we found him naked and passed out under the dock at that place in Tennessee?”

Asher grimaced. “Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

Ben wasn’t entirely comfortable with that, as much as he would like it to be true. “But last night, the one twin said they heard their mother, and the other said it wasn’t her, that it was a monster. I mean, either we believe they’re psychic or we don’t, right?”

“I know,” Mike said, “but sometimes they say stuff that doesn’t make sense, like they don’t really understand what they know.”

“Maybe they don’t. But I think they understood just fine last night. I mean, ‘cause I…”

Ben trailed off. He felt that empty place in his mind like an open wound, that place where there should be memories but there weren’t. 

“You what?” Mike said.

“You saw something last night, didn’t you?” Asher asked with breathy excitement. “I knew it! I told you, Mike, I told you.”

“What did you see?” Mike asked, curious.

Ben rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I don’t know. Shadows. But it talked to me.”

“What did it say?”

“My name, and it was calling to me, but it sounded like someone I used to know.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Ben expected more questions, expected them to probe deeper, to try to pull out that thing that Ben couldn’t remember, but the other boys were just looking at him, unaware that there was so much more that Ben could no longer access.

“So what kind of monster can do that? Sound like other people, I mean.” Asher’s eyes were wide, expectant, like Ben knew all and he was waiting on him to bestow his secret knowledge on him. And maybe he was the expert here, since neither Asher nor Mike seemed to know anything about the supernatural beyond what had happened to them, but he didn’t know nearly enough. Whatever he and his mom knew, it seemed to be the basics.

“I don’t know, man. I’ve never seen anything other than the changelings. I just know some stuff, you know, like how to protect myself.”

“Well, I know that telling the dads about this won’t work. Barry’s in deep, dark denial about the twins, and Harold is super literal. If science can’t prove it, it doesn’t exist. I don’t know about Scott-“ Here Mike looked to Ben, silently asking him if Scott would believe them, but Ben thought about Scott’s encyclopedic knowledge of Ohio State sports and the intricacies of the stock market, and shook his head. “So, yeah, no adult help there. We’ll just have to tough it out and try not to get killed before the end of this trip.”

“They like this place,” Asher said. “What about next year?”

“Bitch and moan and ask to go back to the place in Tennessee? I don’t know. Let’s just get through-“

A sudden, sharp scream echoed over the water. All three boys jumped and whirled towards it. Ben’s heart was pounding hard and heavy in his chest, his stomach trying to crawl up his throat in fear. He half expected to see something – in its mind’s eye, it had the face of the mother changeling – lunging out of the trees, but there was nothing, just Barry and the twins further down the shore like they had been last time he’d looked.

The twins, though, were in meltdown mode.

“No, Daddy! Don’t!” cried one of the twins, Jake he suspected, since he seemed to do most of the talking. He was hanging on his father’s arm, trying to pull him back, away from the water. Owen was crouched down next to them, hands over his face, his little body shaking with sobs. “You’ll make it come here!”

Barry looked utterly and completely bewildered. Ben suspected it was his default mode where his kids were concerned. “Guys, guys. Calm down. I’m just skipping stones.”

Out on the water, there was a series of concentric circles of waves drifting outward where the stone had skipped, bumping into each other and melding together.

“You can’t do that!” Jake howled. “You’ll bring it here!”

Barry looked from the twin hanging on his arm to the one crouching at his feet. “Okay. I’ll stop, guys. It’s okay. I’m not going to skip anymore stones.”

Jake threw himself at his father, arms around his waist, and clung. Barry pet his hair absently and looked towards the other boys, embarrassed and uneasy.

“I think it’s time to go back, boys,” he said.

No one disagreed with him.

***

The walk back to the cabin seemed about a thousand times longer than it had been going. Barry carried Owen the whole way, and he’d sobbed on his shoulder for a long time before passing out. Jake walked next to them until his brother fell asleep then he dropped back and curled his little fingers into the hem of Ben’s sweatshirt.

Sure, the twins were creepy, but Ben didn’t consider extracting himself from Jake’s grip, not even for a second.

Scott and Harold weren’t there when they all trooped up the back steps, and the lead weight that had settled in the pit of Ben’s stomach seemed to get heavier. 

“Where’s Scott?” The pressure in Ben’s chest was building, and he couldn’t seem to get in enough air, and heat was prickling up the back of his neck. Scott was out there, unaware of the supernatural in general, let alone the specific supernatural thing that was out there in these woods, calling out in other people’s voices. “Where’d they go?”

“They went to look for Tommy,” Barry said, settling the sleeping twin on the couch and covering him with a blanket. Jake scrambled up on the couch next to his brother, not getting close enough to wake him, but close enough to pull some of the blanket over his lap. 

Barry straightened, and as soon as he saw Ben, his face drained of color. It was only then that the Ben realized what he must look like, standing there on the verge of a panic attack, and not only that, that Barry knew. Which meant Scott knew and had told his bros. Which made the impending panic attack a thousand times worse now that it was flavored with the distinct taste of embarrassment.

“So, uh, Barry.” Mike was eyeing Ben with an assessing look. “Did you bring Uno?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.” Barry gave them one of those uneasy, too-cheerful smiles, obviously relieved to have an out. “I’ll go grab it.” 

Barry all but fled into his room.

“You okay?” Mike asked. “You look kind of… shaky.”

“Panic attacks.” Ben grabbed onto one of the chairs, gripping it hard, and took a deep breath, deep and strong, then another and another, but it was hard. His lungs didn’t want to work right. “I have them sometimes.”

Maybe it was just the way Mike was, or maybe it was because his stepdad was a doctor, but he didn’t seem the least bit freaked out, which was good, because Ben was about two tiny steps away from melt down mode.

“Okay, um, breathe. Yeah, like that. Come on, sit.” Mike steered him into the chair. Asher hovered nearby with wide eyes, not so calm about it as Mike was, but keeping it together nonetheless. “Keep breathing. You’re safe, we’re safe, and I’m sure Scott and Harold are just fine.”

“Yeah, Ben. Don’t worry,” Jake said, suddenly right there, in Ben’s face, like the world’s smallest, creepiest ninja. “Mr. Scott and Mr. Harold are okay. They’ll be back soon. The monster doesn’t want them. They don’t have any flavor.”

That was both creepy and strangely comforting, and Ben’s next breath was a little easier.

“What do you mean, they don’t have flavor?” Asher said, voice trembling, and that’s when the back door burst open, letting in Harold and Scott.

Their faces were pink from the cold, and their eyes were bright, and they were both grinning. As soon as they saw Jake, Mike, and Asher all hovering over Ben, the smiles sloughed right off their faces.

“Everything okay?” Scott said, zeroing in on Ben.

“Yeah. Barry’s just getting the Uno deck,” Mike said, backing away from Ben a little. Jake was slinking back to his brother with his sneaky ninja moves, and Asher was dragging out the chair next to Ben.

Ben was deeply grateful that the other boys were covering for him and not making this a national emergency. 

Ben dragged in another breath, noting how Harold was eyeing him, like he was ready to dive across the table with CPR or something. “I’m fine,” he told everyone. His voice was trembling and croaky, but he was feeling better now that Scott was there. He took another breath, in-out, and another, in-out. “I’m fine.”

Scott eyed Ben a moment – oh, yeah, his mom had definitely told him about the panic attacks, they were so going to have words - then gave him a forced smile. “So we’re playing, Uno?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Since it’s too cold for the boat today.”

“You’re back,” Barry said with obvious relief as he emerged from his room with the cards just then. “So no Tommy?”

Harold shook his head. “No Tommy. Wherever he passed out, he’s good and hidden. If he’s not back by dinner, we’ll get some help.”

Barry was clearly upset. He fiddled nervously with the cards. “You don’t think we should-”

“No. I don’t,” Scott said. “We looked, we didn’t find him. We’re tired of his crap, so we’re going to treat him like we’re tired of his crap.”

“But, the lake-“

“No. Stop, Barry. It’s not your fault he stomped off in a snit. He’ll come back like he always does, and we’re not going to let him ruin this trip, not again.” Harold pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, held out his hands for the cards. “Now, give me the cards. Everyone else, grab a drink and sit down. I have a championship to defend.”

There was a sudden flurry of activity as people were getting drinks for themselves in the cooler or the refrigerator and settling at the table.

“I think you’re mistaken,” Mike said, plopping down across from Ben with a can of Coke. “The championship is mine this year.”

“You wish,” said Scott joining them with a beer for himself and a can of Sprite for Ben. “It’s mine.”

Ben’s breathing was evening out now that Scott was there, and everyone was safe, and some kind of normality had set in. Harold dealt the cards, and they played until lunchtime, after which Mike hooked up his laptop to the TV and they watched Marvel moves for the rest of the afternoon – _Iron Man_ and _The Amazing Spiderman_ and _Thor_.

It was actually kind of fun, as much fun as it could be out in the woods with one guy missing and a monster using other people’s voices lurking around in the shadows. 

Which was good, because that’s the last fun anyone had for quite some time.

***

At five, Barry fired up the grill. 

There was an unspoken agreement among the kids that the adults couldn’t be left alone, so Ben and Asher had slunk out right behind him with a deck of cards and sodas, while Mike stayed inside with Harold and Scott and the twins. They causally settled the picnic table to play War and pretend that they weren’t freezing to death while they kept an eye on Barry. It was so cold that within minutes, Ben’s fingers were numb at the tips and achy in the joints, and the day had darkened significantly since their walk that morning. It looked more like eight o’clock than five, and Barry had to turn on the sodium light over the grill. It flickered and buzzed, making it seem as if the shadows between the trees were moving – writhing and slithering and alive.

It was unsettling to be out in the open like that, in the cold and in the gloom; Ben was jumpy and having a hard time focusing on the game and on Barry, and really, Barry himself was freaking Ben out a little. He’d been drinking pretty steadily all day, throwing out fake smiles and laughing uproariously at things that weren’t that funny. After he got the fire going he just stared into it, eyes distant, and sort of rocked back and forth as he poked at the coals desultorily, taking a swig of his beer every now and then. Ben had never really seen anyone drunk off their ass before, but he was starting to think Barry might fit that phrasing perfectly. It made him nervous in a way that had nothing to do with the monster in the woods.

Time seemed to be passing at a crawl. Ben and Asher played what seemed to be an endless game of War while Barry poked at the fire and drank his beer. Scott eventually came out with the steaks. He hung out for a few minutes, asked Barry about the twins eating preferences, then went back in to so something or another with the baked potatoes. Ben declared War and lost. Asher declared War and won. All the while, the shadows shifted and deepened, the darkness pressing in on them. 

Asher declared War again, but paused in the middle of laying down his second card, holding it up in the air. “The steaks are burning.”

“What?” Ben looked over his shoulder. The fire in the grill was spitting and hissing, licking the underside of the burning meat, and Barry was standing in front of the path down to the lake, peering into the dark. How Barry had made it over there without being noticed was beyond Ben, but he swore and nearly face planted into the picnic table in his haste to get up. 

“I’ll get Mike,” Asher said, and the screen door slammed a second later.

Ben hurried to Barry’s side. “Barry, what are you doing?” 

Barry was staring down the path with a dazed expression, beer bottle still gripped in his hand. “You hear that?”

No. No, Ben did not. The world was as silent and still as it had been that morning, but after last night, he could imagine. Very vividly, in fact.

“Hear what?”

“Tommy. I hear Tommy.” Barry dropped the bottle and started down the path. The bottle tipped onto its side and beer started to glug-glug-glug from it. “Tommy! I’m coming man! Hold on!” 

“Barry! No! Wait!” Ben grabbed him by the arm, but Barry slipped his grasp with a quick twist of his wrist. Ben stumbled back as Barry started forward again, not at a run, but he definitely wasn’t strolling.

Ben hesitated; panic stirred in his limbs, in the pit of his stomach and the pinch of his lungs, but he knew, knew hard and solid, that if he lost sight of Barry now, he would lose Barry completely.

Ben took a huge, fortifying breath, and lunged down the path after him, his panic attacks be damned.

Barry grunted when Ben grabbed his arm again. Barry stumbled back as Ben tried to pull him to a stop, but then he started forward again, forcing Ben to stumble with him.

“Don’t listen to it,” Ben said, fighting to hold onto Barry and get him to stop. “It isn’t Tommy.”

Barry grunted like a pissed off bull, and the arm Ben was hanging on came up, grabbed a big handful of Ben’s sweatshirt, and shoved. Barry was a big guy, and he had a lot more muscle mass than Ben, and all of the force behind that shove put Ben down on his ass. Hard. Hard enough that when Ben hit the ground, his breath went out of him in one big whoosh.

Barry hadn’t even looked at him once.

Ben could only huddle on the ground and try to suck some air into his lungs, but he could hear Barry’s calls to Tommy dwindling in the distance, and from the direction of the cabin, a lot of shouting and cursing. Someone crashed past Ben at a run, and someone else was kneeling close by, hands on Ben, drawing him into a sitting position.

“Just breathe, Ben. Take a breath. It should pass in a minute.” Ben found that it was Harold, helping him up, talking to him in a gentle voice. “You okay?”

Ben shook his head.

“Did you hit your head?”

Ben shook his head again. 

“Any broken bones?”

Another head shake. It was like having a panic attack without the actual panic, but his breathing was coming more easily now, and he started to climb to his feet.

“Here, let me help.” Harold helped him up and Ben was quick to shake him off, getting plenty of air now, even if his back was screaming from the impact and the palms of his hands were burning from catching himself when he hit the ground.

Behind him further into the trees, Ben could hear Scott swearing, mostly at Barry. “Stop, Barry! Dammit, Barry, would you stop?”

“But Tommy’s out there! I heard him calling for me.” Barry’s words were full of anguish and wild terror. “I’ve got to go find him!”

“No. He’s not! All that’s out here is us and the lake.” Ben looked back; Scott had caught Barry, and he had hands curled into Barry’s shirt to hold him still. “You’ve had too much to drink, and you knocked Ben down hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and your kids, do you see your kids? That’s them, crying…”

And the twins were crying, standing there on the back porch next to Asher, tears running down their faces.

“Boys, why don’t you go back inside while Scott and I help your dad,” Harold called to them. “Mike?”

Mike was standing at the mouth of the path in bare feet, the poker from the fireplace in one hand, but he came forward at Harold’s request and escorted Ben towards the house.

“Don’t leave them,” Ben muttered to him when Harold turned back to Scott and Barry.

Mike nodded and stayed at the foot of the steps while Ben and Asher steered the twins into the cabin. Ben headed for the couch while Asher closed the door on the scene outside.

“You okay?” Asher asked.

Ben nodded as he eased onto the couch. “You got any aspirin?”

“Sure.”

Asher disappeared into Harold’s room, and the twins stood staring at him, hands entwined, tears sliding down their faces.

“Please don’t be mad at Daddy. He didn’t mean it,” one of the twins said, Jake no doubt. “It was the monster.”

“Yeah, I know, man,” Ben said. His butt and back ached from the fall. “It’s cool.”

“It’s really mad, now. It’s not going to stop,” Jake said.

“I know.” Ben’s palms were stinging, and when he turned them upwards, he found they were scraped up, and little beads of blood were welling up from the abrasions. “We’ll try to get the grown ups to leave tomorrow morning, okay?”

“But it’s not going to let us leave,” Jake replied, this time with the hint of a desperate whine in his voice.

“Yeah,” Ben said with a sigh and wiped his bloody palms on his jeans. “I know that, too.”

***

Dinner was a solemn affair.

Harold and Scott somehow salvaged the steaks, cutting off the burnt side and putting the rest back on the grill. Barry was sent to his room, shamefaced and unfed, with orders to sleep it off. Mike put on _Thor: The Dark World_ while they ate, and no one spoke or smiled, just bulldozed their way through their meat and potatoes. Mike and Asher were put to work cleaning the kitchen afterwards, while everyone else watched the movie in grim exhaustion. By the time the movie was over, it wasn’t that late, but it was dark and everyone was ready for bed. Harold promised everyone that they would be leaving first thing in the morning before he sent them all upstairs.

But when Ben was trudging up the stairs behind the other boys, wincing a little as he climbed, Scott came to the stairs with an air of intent.

“Ben, hey, can I talk to you a minute?” he said. 

Ben paused and looked down on Scott, standing there in his sweatpants and an old Guy Harvey t-shirt, gazing up at him somberly. Dread settled hard and heavy in the pit of Ben’s stomach; he had a good idea of what was coming and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

Ben nodded and changed direction, trudging back down the stairs.

“Let’s, um, let’s sit,” Scott said nervously and went over to perch uneasily on the edge of the couch.

Ugh. Awkward. Ben trudged over and sat across from him on the big, overstuffed chair.

“Today was kind of a rough day. You okay?” Scott asked. “You’re moving kind of slow. Harold can look at it if it hurts too much.”

Ben shrugged and wished he hadn’t when his back gave a little throb. “I’m fine. Just a little achy.”

Scott looked super guilty. “I’m really sorry about Barry, kiddo. He’s kind of like a bull in a china shop when he’s drunk, and he feels responsible for Tommy wondering off, and anyway….” He trailed off with a sigh. “Look, Ben, I’m really sorry. Between Tommy and the weather and now Barry’s freak out….” He shook his head. “This just was not the fishing trip I envisioned.”

“Yeah. I’m cool. Don’t worry about it. It’s all good.” And it was, sort of, since the monster in the woods wasn’t Scott’s fault. But Ben had the distinct impression that Scott had more to say, since he was being so fidgety and nervous. He was supposedly a really good courtroom lawyer, the kind they made TV shows about, and it would have been hilarious to see him so unnerved if Ben weren’t the focus of whatever was unnerving him.

“Look, I get that I’m not Dean-“ 

Ben blinked at Scott, confused. “Who?”

Scott exhaled like he was trying to keep his cool. “You and your mom, I swear-“ Scott rubbed his hands over his face brusquely before he tried again. “Look, I know I’m not him, and I know you’re not my biggest fan, and I get that the only thing we really have in common is sports, but, you know if you need anyone to talk to, well, I’m here.”

Scott stared at him expectantly, and Ben stared back, realizing suddenly where this whole trip to the lake thing was coming from.

Ben huffed angrily, just really, fantastically enraged. 

“Dude, I don’t need anyone to talk to, and I’m sick of everyone trying.” He and his mom were having such words when he got home, she just had no idea. And Aunt Abby, too, because she had obviously been in on this. “Talking about what happened to Matt and the car accident and all that won’t make it better, it won’t undo it. I just want to forget about it and get on with my life. If you really want to help, maybe you can tell Mom and Aunt Abby not to send you to use some bullshit guy bonding crap to get me to open up.”

Ben stood, fists clenched, and Scott gaped up at him in surprise. “So yeah, we don’t have anything in common, not even the same sports, so maybe you should take a hint and back off. I don’t need some kind of male role model in my life, and I’m certainly not interested in being the substitute son you’re never going to have. If I want to talk to someone, it’s not going to be you.”

Scott’s expression crumpled, but Ben stood firm in his anger. This was crap. He was fine. He had it all under control – the panic attacks, the missing memories, all of it. He didn’t need friends or a social life or Scott trying to butt in on it with a relationship they were never going to have.

“You should go to bed now,” Scott said, a warble in his voice.

“Yeah. I should,” Ben replied, and stomped upstairs.

Everyone was already in bed when slammed open the door, the twins curled up in a single bunk together, Asher in Mike in their separate beds. They had obviously been waiting for him to come up before turning off the lights.

“You okay, man?” Mike said, peering at him over the edge of his blanket.

“Yeah. Peachy,” Ben snapped. He toed off his shoes and dug out the salt, lined the window and the door, and all the while, he felt the eyes of the other boys on him, watching him and his sharp, angry movements. That just pissed him off more, and he threw the canister into his bag, tired of being under everyone’s microscope all the time.

He turned on them, put his hand on the light switch. “Everyone ready for lights out, or do you need to stare at me some more?”

The twins stared at him with big, round eyes, and Asher had hunched down under his blanket, leaving only his boy band hair visible.

“No, we’re good,” Mike said mildly, like Ben wasn’t throwing a giant temper tantrum. “Go ahead.”

Ben flicked the switch, and threw himself into bed, fully clothed. He could hear the boys in the other bunks, shifting around in their beds, tugging at blankets and getting their pillows settled the right way. Ben rolled onto his side and faced the wall, tugged his own blanket up to his neck. His jaw hurt from clenching it so tightly, and his back hurt and his feet were freezing and this whole lake trip was just one big train wreck, beginning to end.

Ben closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep. The sooner he could get to sleep, the sooner the morning would come, and the sooner they would get the hell away from this lake and its monster and Scott’s unwelcome interest in his life.

Sleep surged up at him pretty quickly, and one last, idle thought occurred to him just before he drifted off: _And just who the hell was Dean?_


	3. Chapter 3

Ben was dreaming about a warehouse. It was dark and damp and smelled like garbage and mildew and sulfur. He was scared but was running behind someone, someone familiar and safe, leading him out. There were others here in the dark, coming after them, and Ben’s heart was racing and his throat was stinging and his mom, his _mom_ -

“Oh God, oh God someone help me, please!”

Ben snapped awake, a flood of adrenaline taking him from zero to sixty in half a second. Every hair on Ben’s body was standing on end, and icy, bald terror rolled through him like a tidal wave.

The other kids coming awake too. He heard Mike’s muttered _what the hell?_ and one of the twins whimpering and Asher making questioning noises.

“Barry! Harold! Scott! Help me! Help me, please!” The screams were coming from outside, sharp and clear, echoing into the night. It sounded like they were coming from the backyard, from outside the very window, so close, just right there.

Downstairs the adults were throwing open doors. Scott and Harold and Barry were all talking over one another, their words incoherent but clearly terrified. There was a heavy thump to Ben’s right, Mike, probably jumping down from the top bunk, and then the overhead light came on.

Ben squinted, saw Mike and his bed-mussed hair, saw Asher sitting up on his bunk and white as a sheet, saw the twins wrapped around each other in abject terror.

“Help me! Oh God, help me!” And then incoherent, agonized howling.

“That sounds like Tommy,” Asher said.

“That’s not Mr. Tommy,” one twin said.

“That’s the monster,” the other said.

“Yeah, we know.” Ben climbed out of bed and stumbled towards the door. “We can’t let them go out there.”

Mike nodded, and then he and Ben were barreling down stairs, calling for Harold and Scott, but the back door slammed shut before they were even halfway down.

“Too late.” Mike said, and snatched the fireplace poker out of its canister.

He and Ben barreled outside after the adults, into the dark and bitter nighttime cold. Ben leapt off the porch and hit the ground running, wet dew soaking into his socks. The glow of flashlights bounced around on the trees, bright as sunlight in the impenetrable dark, and the adults were shouting for Tommy, terror in their voices, calling his name, asking to tell them where he was. There was no coherent answer to their questions, just inarticulate screaming that kept moving further and further away, leading them down to the lake.

Ben and Mike followed the beams of their flashlights and their panicked shouting. The adults had a good lead on them. He and Mike called out to them, begging them to come back, but they were in the full thrall of the monster, heading straight for the water where it was surely waiting to pull them in.

When the path finally opened onto the lake shore, and their feet hit the wet sand, all three adults were wandering along the water, tossing the beams of the flashlights across the trees, across the water, turning them up into the sky like they’d find him up there, floating in midair. Tommy’s screams were all around them, loud and immediate like he was just out of sight, in the trees, in the water, right beside them on the sand.

“Harold! Guys!” Mike shouted, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. He made no move to go closer to the water, and neither did Ben, too paralyzed by fear. The thing was out there. He could feel it. And the screams. They seemed so real. “Come back. That’s not him.”

Scott and Barry didn’t even acknowledge their presence, and Harold only spared them a brief glance over his shoulder.

“Mike, go back to the house,” He was at the edge of the lake, his bare feet only millimeters from the water. The beam of his flashlight was dancing over the surface in wide arcs, searching for Tommy. “Stay with Asher and the twins.”

Then, in the light of his beam, something moved.

It was black and massive, highlighted for just a second as Harold’s flashlight passed over it. Harold jerked the light back, and the thing was still there, its mass heading straight towards the shore, straight towards them. 

“What the hell?” Harold said, following it with his flashlight as it moved.

“Harold, get away from the water,” Ben said, heart hitching in fear. Next to him, Mike swore.

“What is that?” Barry said, drifting towards the water’s edge, turning the beam of his own flashlight on the lake.

It was moving faster now, rising to the surface, water swelling over it like the ocean over the back of a whale, and Scott was joining them at the water’s edge, adding his flashlight beam to theirs. Around them Tommy’s agonized screams had fallen silent.

“Scott! Don’t!” Ben shouted, but was ignored. He needed to move forward, go to Scott and haul him back, but his terror wouldn’t let him. He turned to Mike. “What should we do?”

Mike shook his head at a loss. He was as scared as he was, Ben could see it in what little cast off light was reaching them from the flashlights, and neither of them wanted to go any closer to the water. But the black mass was close now, mere feet from the shore, and the adults were just staring at it, mesmerized, and if Mike and Ben didn’t do something, they would be taken down beneath the water.

“You guys, please get away from the water,” Mike begged, his voice trembling, but it was too late.

Something huge surged out of the lake.

It came up on two feet like a man. Its skin glimmered bright green in the glare of the flashlights, rough and bumpy like a reptile’s. Its pupils retracted into a slit in the light, and its eyes gleamed cat’s eye yellow. Its mouth was full of rows and rows of sharp teeth like a shark, and its hands ended in huge talons.

The adults just stood there and stared.

The thing crouched in front of them, its eyes roving from one man to the next, an evil chittering noise emitting from its throat. It must have hypnotized them or something, because they didn’t move, didn’t twitch, not even with the monster raised one long arm above its head, not when its webbed talons were spreading, and its shoulder was going back, and its intent to slice into them was being telegraphed in every line of its body.

“Harold!” Mike screamed, his voice raw, “Move!”

The claw came down, and sliced across Harold’s chest like knives.

The spell was broken. Harold bellowed in pain and fell back, taking Scott with him. Flashlights were dropped; the beams went wild, tumbling and rolling, aimed now at the trees, now at the water, now at Barry, standing there frozen, mouth gaping. He stood fixed to the spot as the monster as it turned slowly towards him, its talons dripping with Harold’s blood.

As soon as the monster took its first step towards him, Barry screamed. He stumbled back and lost his footing in the wet sand, hit the ground hard. The monster swooped in and caught him by the leg. Barry howled and flailed, legs kicking, hands scrabbling on the sand, trying to get purchase, but the thing was unaffected. It just started a steady retreat back into the water, dragging Barry along by the ankle. Barry’s shirt rode up over his stomach, and he was making awful whimpering sounds in his throat like a dying animal. The water was flowing up over him, over his legs, over his thighs, flowing up and over his bare belly-

Whatever fear was holding Ben in check let go, and he was running forward, towards Harold and Scott to help them up, while Mike rushed past him, towards the monster, the fireplace poker held like a baseball bat. He crashed into the water and let it fly with an almighty battle cry, like it was the bottom of the ninth and down to him to win the game, hitting the monster so hard across the back that the monster, now thigh deep in the water, staggered forward a step and let Barry go.

Barry flailed around in the water, still making those awful noises, got his feet under him and bolted out onto the shore. Mike’s footing must not have been good, though, because he fell on the follow through, crashing to his knees in the water. The monster turned, turned on Mike, arm going up for another one of those heavy, claw-riddled slaps.

Ben heard the _No!_ roar out of his mouth, and then he was running, rushing Mike, knocking him out of the way, into the water. Ben felt a breeze as the claw missed his back by millimeters, then the rush of the icy water as he and Mike both went under.

The cold cut through him like knives, and they hit the bottom of the lake, the grit of sand flowing up and around them. Ben detangled himself from Mike and bounced back up instantly, flying on adrenaline and terror, water pouring off of him as he rose into the freezing air.

And it was right there, waiting for him.

Its cat’s eye yellow eyes were glowing all on their own, and it loomed over him, eyes boring into his. In that moment, Ben felt its hunger, felt that empty place in his memory start to fill with a jumble of images that were coming too fast to make sense of, the loss of those memories the very thing that gave the flesh of its victims the flavor the monster preferred.

Ben should have screamed. He should have jumped to the side or backed away or something, anything, but he didn’t. 

He just stood there, transfixed, just like the adults had been, staring up into the things eyes and letting the lost memories well up from deep, deep within – scrambled eggs being pushed onto his plate with the command to eat, the engine and its carburetor, the sunlight on the back of his neck. Watching from his bedroom window while the man in the flannel shirt raked the leaves in the yard while the sun was still creeping over the horizon. Tiptoeing down the stairs when he should have been in bed and seeing the glass of amber liquid on the coffee table, the blue flicker of the TV, and the voice, rough and rumbly, asking him if he shouldn’t be in bed…

There was suddenly a fireplace poker in Ben’s face.

He stumbled back, flopping back into the water again, the sharp edges of reality coming back into focus with the rush of icy water around him. 

The monster roared in agony, its skin spitting and smoking where the poker emerged from its shoulder, blood the color of black bile spilling from the wound. It hauled its weight to the right, as if it was trying to twist away from the poker, but it couldn’t escape. It roared again, its yawning mouth showing off its rows of shark’s teeth, and threw itself into the water and disappeared, swallowed up by the lake, and the fireplace poker with it.

Silence.

Mike was standing over Ben, chest heaving. He hauled Ben to his feel and dragged him towards the adults. Ben stumbled with him, his steps dragging in the shallows. They were panting hard and shivering, their clothes and hair dripping with cold lake water.

Everyone was staring at everyone else in shock; Scott was holding up Harold, bare chested and holding his own shirt held against Harold’s wounds, Barry was standing just behind them, one hand fisted in Harold’s sleeve like a little kid, and they were just gaping, minds completely blown. Mike swept up one of the flashlights as they staggered out of the water. He aimed the flashlight at the ground at their feet, illuminating everyone’s shell shocked faces from below. There was blood everywhere. 

“We have to go back to the house,” Mike said. 

No one reacted.

“Hey!” Mike shouted. “Now!”

There was a beat of silence, and then they did as he said, the adults following his orders like sheep as they turned back to the cabin, Barry obediently grabbing the other two flashlights when Mike told him to.

Mike had to steer Ben homeward with one hand on his arm. It was like walking through a tunnel of darkness, nothing visible except where the flashlights fell, any hint of trees or sky swallowed in blackness. Ben’s wet clothing was heavy, weighing him down, his feet slipping in his wet socks. He was cold, so very cold, and his teeth were chattering, and his fingers were numb, and his ears ached in the chill. But he felt none of it, was barely aware of putting one foot in front of the other in the enormity of what had happened.

For a minute he’d remembered. He’d looked up into the glowing eyes of the lake monster, and for one split second of a moment, he’d remembered everything and completely understood just how much he’d lost.

***

The adults, of course, wanted to leave.

“We have to go,” Barry said, darting here and there, grabbing random things – a TV remote, a throw pillow, someone’s hoodie from the back of the chair. His hair was dripping water on his dry t-shirt, and he was trailing little droplets of blood on the floor from the shallow gouges above his ankle where the creature had gripped him. 

Ben watched him from the couch in dry clothes, the blanket from his bed wrapped around his shoulders. He felt numb and disconnected. Whatever memories the monster had dragged out of him were gone again, but he’d had a taste of having them back, and there was a dark, reckless part of him that wanted to go back down to the lake to find them again. 

“Barry stop,” Scott said wearily. He was wrapping Harold’s chest with gauze, his hands shaking as he following Harold’s directions. The slices across Harold’s chest were deep enough to show the layers of fatty tissue and muscle, and blood was smeared all over him. 

Mike had been designated Scott’s assistant, and was handing him what he needed from Harold’s doctor bag. Asher was hovering close by, face pale.

“Stop, Scott? Did you see that thing?” Barry snatched up a random flip-flop that Ben was pretty sure belonged to Mike, adding it to the other crap he was cradling against his chest. “It’s going to kill us. We have to go. Boys, go get your stuff. We’re leaving.”

“We can’t leave,” Jake said. “The cars won’t start.”

“What? Of course they will,” Barry murmured absently as he turned in a circle, searching for who knew what.

Scott and Harold shared a look as Scott taped down the edges of Harold’s bandages. Ben realized for the first time that not all the adults were in quite the same level of denial about the twins as Barry was.

“Boys, why won’t the cars start?” Scott said, pivoting on the balls of his feet to address the twins.

The twins were curled up on either side of Ben in their matching Captain America pajamas, his own, personal worried bookends. Owen burrowed into Ben’s side, pressing his face into his arm. 

“Because the monster won’t let them,” Jake said.

Barry dropped the stuff in his hands and whirled on his kids, eyes wide. “What do you mean it won’t let them?” 

He was nearly shouting, and Jake pressed himself closer to Ben in fear, which pissed Ben off.

“Don’t shout at them,” Ben snapped at Barry. “If you’d bothered listening to them ever, we might not be here now.”

“Ben, that’s enough,” Scott said, calm and cool as he stood. “Barry, find a place to sit and be quiet.”

“Scott, we have to _go_ ,” Barry said with a whine. Barry was actually whining. Ben scoffed in disgust, and Mike was giving him the stink eye.

“We will,” Scott said with admirable restraint. “But we’re not going to be stupid about it. Now sit.” 

Barry opened his mouth as if to protest, but Scott folded his arms and fixed Barry with a stern look Ben had only ever seen aimed at his cousins. Barry deflated and ambled over to the staircase to sit. 

Scott sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Okay, then. Let’s be logical about this. I need everyone’s car keys.”

Barry had his in his pocket. Mike fetched Harold’s from his room. No one knew where Tommy’s keys were and no one bothered looking. When all of the keys were in his hand, Scott took a flashlight and a meat cleaver and went out into the dark.

Whatever detachment Ben felt was gone in a wash of panic as he watched Scott walk out into the night. Ben all but threw himself off the couch, abruptly dislodging the twins from his side. Mike was right behind him with another flashlight.

Scott was only standing on the porch, though, casting the flashlight beam over the cars.

“Scott,” Ben said, voice strangled.

“I’m all right, Ben” Scott said mildly. “I’m right here. The cars look fine to me.”

“Doesn’t mean they’ll start though,” Mike replied. 

“You boys stay there,” Scott said and hopped off the porch.

Ben didn’t want to stay there, he wanted to go with Scott, but he obediently stayed on the porch with Mike and watched Scott nervously as he slid into the front seat of the X5. He left the door open while fiddled inside, and after a moment, he jumped back out again.

“Nothing,” he told them, slamming the door. 

He went to Harold’s X5, one car over and further away from the porch and safety, and Ben’s heart climbed into his throat as Scott tried to start it. After a minute, Scott got out, went to Barry’s Pathfinder, even further away now, and gave it the same treatment. Mike followed him with the flashlight, while Ben twitched nervously. Mike’s shoulder bumped his once or twice in solidarity.

Scott got out and slammed the door. “Okay, back inside.”

Ben didn’t relax until Scott was back on the porch, herding them inside.

“The cars won’t start?” Harold asked. He was slumped in the same chair at the table, pale and shivering. Asher had settled in the chair next to Harold and was watching him anxiously.

“The cars won’t start,” Scott replied. “The interior lights don’t even come on.”

His eyes slowly crawled from the twins, who had huddled together in the warm spot Ben had left, then Barry, who was still sitting at the foot of the stairs, face hidden in his hands. Then he looked back to Harold, and Harold nodded.

“So tell me, boys,” Scott said gently, perching on the edge of the coffee table in front of them. “What was the thing out in the lake?”

The twins shifted uneasily, not used to adults listening to them or taking them seriously. They looked to the other boys for help.

“It’s okay, guys,” Mike said, settling on the arm of the big chair. “You can tell them. They’re ready to listen.”

Ben sat down next to Scott on the coffee table and gave them an encouraging nod. He was relieved they weren’t going to have to convince the adults that the creature was real _and_ a danger, but he hated that the burden of explaining everything was falling on these two little kids. He was sure it was hard and isolating, being creepily psychic; he felt that way just knowing the supernatural existed. It was probably a thousand times worse for the twins.

“It’s a monster,” Jake said.

“A hungry monster,” said Owen.

“And mad,” Jake said. “We stole from it, and it wants its stuff back.”

“Stole from it?” Scott said. “What did we steal?”

“The bone.” Everyone turned to Asher, huddling next to Harold with his hair falling into his eyes. “I found that bone in the water.”

“It likes to remember,” Jake said.

“It remembers with the bones?” Harold asked. He made a thoughtful noise. “Like a serial killer. Is that why it’s attacking us? Because of the bone?”

Both twins shook their heads in synch. “That’s why it noticed us, but people don’t come down to the lake anymore because they’re scared. It’s really hungry, and it likes the taste of lost things, and we taste good.”

“What do you mean it likes the taste of lost things?” Scott asked.

“We lost mommy, and that tastes good to it. And Mr. Tommy lost the way you used to be, before you had families. And now you lost Mr. Tommy, and it thinks that tastes good, too. But Ben lost something bigger than just one person and the monster likes the way that tastes best.”

Ben’s stomach bottomed out. “What?” he said, shocked. “What did I lose?”

“Memories _and_ a person,” Owen said. “It’s all hidden from you.”

“What do you mean, a person?” Sure, he’d felt the missing memories the creature had dug up, had been aware that he had been missing something for a while now, but that it seemed impossible that he’d forgotten a whole person.

Scott turned this awful, searching look on Ben. “You and your mom really don’t remember Dean, do you? Abby and I thought you guys were just being stubborn.”

Now everyone was looking at him like he was the world’s biggest freak. Ben clenched his fists and refused to let the panic come. His chest was tight, and he wasn’t sure he’d win this battle. “Scott, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Wait. Dean? As in Sam and Dean?” Mike asked. “But you remember them. We talked about them yesterday.”

“Wait, how do you know Dean?” Scott asked Mike, but was summarily ignored.

“He doesn’t remember him the same way you do,” Jake said.

“And he has more to remember,” Owen said. 

“What does that mean?” Ben snapped. He couldn’t even begin to understand how the fuzzy memories of the guy who saved him from the changelings could possibly connect to the feeling of forgetting that he had after the car accident. “How did I forget an entire person?”

Both boys flinched at his sharp tone. 

“Something hid your memories, but left some so you could be safe,” Owen replied, shrinking into his brother a little.

“What was it?” Ben asked.

“Dunno. But it was really big and bright.” Owen paused, eyes distant, head titled like he was listening to something no one else could hear. His nose scrunched up in confusion. “It had a funny voice.”

“How do you know that?” Ben was shaking, and his nails were biting into his palm, and his next breath was difficult in coming. “I didn’t even know that.”

Jake shrugged. “We just know stuff sometimes.”

Scott’s hand was on Ben’s back, rubbing his back in gentle circles. “Is there anything else we should know, boys?”

Owen, apparently done with talking, buried his face against his brother. Jake shook his head. 

“Okay. You did really well, guys. Thank you.”

Jake frowned at Scott and didn’t reply.

“So here’s the situation,” Scott said, coming to his feet with a gentle pat on Ben’s back. “The cars won’t start. There’s no cell reception out here, even when monsters aren’t trying to eat us, and it’s the dead of night. What we’re going to do is try to get some rest, and wait for the sun to come up. As far as I can tell, we’re not going to be able to get out of here without a little light. How does that sound to everyone?”

No one said anything. 

Scott nodded. “No objections? Then that’s what we’ll do.”

***

Ben and Mike pushed the couch in front of the front door while Scott and Asher pushed the big chair and the dining room table against the back. Then the boys were sent upstairs to sleep, but, except fort he twins, no one actually slept. Ben and Asher and Mike sat on the bunks in silence and listened to the adults downstairs. Voices rose between Scott and Barry, and somewhere in there were a few conciliatory murmurs from Harold.

“I’m going to have to be bait,” Ben finally said. It wasn’t even something he thought about, just a fact that had struck him like lightening and left no room for wavering. He wasn’t even really scared, just resigned.

“What?” Asher said, confused.

“You up for it?” Mike asked, rising up on his elbows and looking down at Ben from his bunk.

“Well, we’re not getting out of here unless we kill it, and the twins said it’s got a thing for me, so yeah, I’m game.”

“Wait, are you saying that we have to kill it to get out of here?” Asher said alarmed. “As in just us? No grown ups?”

Mike leaned over the side of his bunk to look at his brother. “No one except for Scott is in any condition to do anything to begin with, but they’re also only thinking about getting us to safety. We don’t have time to wait for them to realize the only way to be safe is to kill it.”

“But what if we gave it back the bone?” Asher said. 

“Do you really think that would stop it?” Mike asked.

Asher opened his mouth to argue, paused, and then shook his head. 

“Well, then we have to kill it,” Mike said reasonably.

“But how?” Asher asked. “We’ll need a plan.”

“I have a few ideas about that,” said Ben and explained what he had in mind.

***

By the time the sun came up, their plan was decided.

The only way out of the cabin was to climb out the bedroom window onto the porch roof. Mike and Asher went first, but while Ben was making his way out, the twins woke, and it fell on him to calm them down while Mike and Asher went out to the cars to get what they needed.

He wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“It’s okay, guys. Seriously.” One twin had his hands wrapped around Ben’s as he leaned half in and half out the window, trying to pull him back in. Ben’s skin was crawling, turning his back to the woods like this, but the twins were on the verge of hysteria, and that seemed to be the bigger danger. “Me and Mike and Asher have dealt with monsters before.”

“But this one has something you want!” Owen wailed, eyes welling with tears. Ben wasn’t quite sure when in the past two days he’d come to be able to tell them apart, but it was clear as day now which twin was which.

“I know, but-“

“But you’re going to out there get it back and you can’t get it back, not like this.” The tears spilled down Owen’s cheeks, and he tugged harder on Ben’s arm. “The monster is going to eat the things you lost ‘cause that’s what it likes. You won’t remember them because they’ll be gone, and you’ll be dead!”

Ben’s heart froze in his chest. “I’m not going to get my memories back. I’m going to kill the monster.”

“You lie to yourself, like he does,” Owen said fiercely and with the force of authority of someone much older, his weepy terror suddenly gone. Jake pressed closer to his brother, staring at Ben grimly over his shoulder. “But lying to yourself will let the monster kill you.”

Ben wasn’t really sure who Owen was talking about, but the kid’s solemn authority was really freaking him out. “Owen-“

“No, listen,” Owen said and jerked hard on Ben’s arm. “You can’t want your memories, not with this monster. You’ll die if you let it give them back.”

A chill rolled over Ben. “Okay, I hear you.” 

“Ben!” Mike called with a stage whisper from below. “Come on!”

“I have to go now, guys,” Ben’s voice trembled and his stomach rolled uneasily. “Close the window behind me.”

Owen gave a single, sharp nod, his lower lip trembling, and let go of Ben’s sleeve. “It’s at the playground. Don’t try to remember.”

Ben nodded and pulled back, and the curtains swung closed over the terrified faces of the twins. As he crept down to the edge of the roof where Mike and Asher waited, he heard the bedroom window close behind him with a final, quiet snick.

***

It may have been dawn, but it wasn’t much brighter than the night had been. The clouds were still heavy above them, low and threatening, but they could at least see the trees around them now. They could also see how still everything was, like the evil of the monster had driven everything that might have life away, even the wind.

“Are you sure this is the way to go?” Asher asked as they jogged along the trail towards the playground they had almost visited two days ago. He waved the golf club in his hand at the trail ahead of them. “To the playground?”

Each of them had a golf club for protection, though Mike had the nine iron. The creature’s flesh had hissed and spit when the iron poker went through it, so they were working on the theory that iron was its weakness. The only thing made of iron they could get their hands on without going downstairs for any of the fireplace tools was the nine iron in Harold’s golf bag, and Mike swore it was made of iron because he had researched nine irons thoroughly before the gave this one to Harold for his last birthday.

“This is the way Owen told me to go.” Ben had a driver in his hand and a bottle of lighter fluid tucked up under his arm. He’d grabbed the lighter fluid and a box of matches impulse as they had passed the grill on their way out of the backyard. Fire killed everything, and they’d need to do something with the body afterwards. “I’m not going to doubt him now.”

“But why the playground, though?” Asher asked.

“Because it likes the slide? I don’t know Asher. Maybe it has a nest there or something.” Mike had a miniature flashlight on his key chain, and he was casting it on the path in front of them. “Now be quiet. We’re coming up on it.”

Asher made an unhappy noise, but fell silent as they emerged from the path.

It wasn’t just a playground, but apparently a picnic area as well, right there at the edge of the water. There were several picnic tables and a couple of grills and a tiny set of bathrooms under a shelter. No one had been here for a long time, though; one of the grills was knocked over and partially grown over with weeds, and the roof of the shelter had partially collapsed under the weight of a fallen tree. One swing was missing from the swing set and the other swing was dangling from only one chain. Several rungs were missing from the ladder of the slide. And the climbing frame…

“The hell?” Mike said, playing the flashlight over the structure.

“Oh, eww,” Asher said. “Are those… are those bones?”

They were. They were bones.

The climbing frame was a square structure of rungs and ladders for kids climb on and hang on and do all the gymnastics-like stuff that had made Ben feel like a bad ass when he was little. It was probably painted in very bright colors, but it was hard to tell from all the bones attached to it. Some had been stuck directly to the frame like a kid’s macaroni art, and other bits were hung from the bars by some sort of goop that had dried hard and dark yellow, dangling like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Other bones were strewn on the ground around the frame as if they had been tossed aside either because they were found wanting or maybe because they had been replaced with something newer.

“Dude, this is its trophy case,” Ben said, disgusted.

“Well, the twins did say it liked to remember with bones,” Mike said.

“Like a serial killer,” Asher said, echoing his stepfather.

“Yeah. And this thing is totally sentient. Look how they’re arranged.” Mike played the light along the bars. “By, like, type and size.”

“Ugh. There’s even a pattern,” Asher added.

Which was true. The bones glued to the frame tended to be long, slender bones, like arm and leg bones, and there was a pattern of long short long short. Curved and round bones like spinal disks and pelvises were the favorites for hanging, and the smaller spinal disks were interspersed between the larger pelvises. Here and there was a curved rib bone for variety. 

“No skulls at least,” Mike said, like that made it better somehow.

“Okay,” Ben said, feeling a little queasy. “Let’s do this.”

Ben handed the lighter fluid to Asher and dug the matches out of his pocket. Asher juggled things around, sticking his own gold club under one arm so he could take the lighter fluid. Mike took the matches and stuffed them in the front pocket of his hoodie. 

Then Asher was handing Ben a bundle. “Here. I found it in the back of the car with the golf clubs.”

Ben hadn’t noticed that Asher was carrying anything other than his golf club, and he reached out cautiously to take it from him. There was something hard and narrow inside. Ben opened it and found-

“Eugh,” Ben said, and dropped it. It was the bone Asher had found in the water the other day. The human bone. The one that used to belong to a human.

“Dude,” Asher said, scowling. He picked it back up and held it out to Ben, careful to keep it wrapped in the towel. “I thought it might help lure back to shore. Since, you know, my taking it got it so mad.”

Ben looked to Mike for some help, but Mike just shrugged.

“He has a point,” Mike said. 

“This is so gross,” Ben muttered, and took the bone back, holding it with the towel.

“Grosser than that?” Mike asked, nodding towards the climbing frame covered with dangling bones.

Ben didn’t dignify that with an answer. “Okay. Here goes.” 

His stomach was flip-flopping anxiously as he walked down to the water’s edge, and panic was more than ready to well up and hit Ben good and hard with an attack, but it was easier to force it away. Something about knowing that he really had forgotten something important made it easier, like it was the not knowing that he had forgotten that had made him panic, not the forgetting itself. Which was just as confusing as it sounded.

At the waterline, he glanced back once at Mike and Asher, standing back near the swing set with their golf clubs at the ready, then he looked out over the water, as flat and reflective as it had been yesterday.

“I’m here!” he shouted at the lake. He half expected to hear an echo, but there was nothing, just his voice going out and getting absorbed into the stillness of the morning. “Come and get me!”

Nothing happened. The lake sat there, still and silent.

Ben looked back at the other boys again. Asher shrugged, and Mike made a go on motion with his hand. 

Ben sighed and turned around, waved the bone in the air. “I’ve got your bone!”

Nothing continued to happen.

Ben looked at the bone in his hand and wrinkled his nose. This wasn’t working.

Ben walked back up to the other boys. 

“What are you doing?” Asher asked.

“I don’t think it’s as stupid as we think it is. It’s hurt, and it’s not just going to come up and let us hurt it again.” 

“So what do you suggest?” Mike asked.

“It got pretty mad when Asher took this bone, right?” Ben grimaced. Ugh. He couldn’t believe he was holding a human bone. “And it isn’t even one it put on display.”

“Right,” Mike said, and Asher nodded. 

“So if losing the crappy bone pissed it off….” Ben tossed the femur at the horrific trophy case, glad to be rid of it. The other bones knocked together with hollow tinkles as it passed through them and landed somewhere inside. Ben gestured at Asher for the lighter fluid. “How’s it going to feel if we burn its trophy case?“

Mike grinned and fished the matches out of the pocket of his hoodie. He rattled them in their box. “Who wants to do the honors?”

***

The bones blazed bright in the morning gloom.

Ben had drenched the climbing frame in lighter fluid, and Asher and Mike had played Rock Paper Scissors for the honor of throwing the match. Asher won and had whooped excitedly as the whole thing caught fire with an explosive whoosh.

The three of them stood a little distance away as they watched, and in the chill of the morning, Ben secretly and guiltily relished the heat cast off from burning the bones of the monster’s victims. The fire crackled and spit as it burned the weird goop affixing the bones to the frame, and the bones bounced and clinked on the metal as they fell to the ground when the goo burned away. The smoke smelled pungent, like rotting meat.

After watching it for a few minutes, though, Ben turned his attention back to the lake.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s try this again.”

Ben grabbed his golf club and went back down to the water’s edge.

“Hey!” he shouted. “I’m burning your stuff!”

The lake remained still and silent, and more of nothing happened.

Ben sighed in frustration. He called out a few more taunts, all of which were lame and stupid, because seriously, how do you taunt a lake monster? Eventually he trudged back up to Mike and Asher.

“This isn’t working.”

“Yeah. I noticed,” Mike said. He tapped the ground thoughtfully with the nine iron. “Maybe we should-“

The creature came out of nowhere. 

It lunged out of the trees behind them, a dark blur against darker shadows, and Asher was suddenly on the ground ten feet away from them, straddled by the lake monster. The poker was still protruding from its shoulder, the flesh around it black and bubbly like it had been burned, but that didn’t seem to keep it from raising one webbed hand above its head to slice up Asher with its talons.

Asher screamed, wild and terrified, and Mike was on the move the minute it knocked his brother down, hauling up the nine iron above his head to bring it down on its back.

But Ben had been right. The creature wasn’t stupid. It had circled around on them, coming from the woods behind them instead of from the water, and now it whirled on Mike, using the momentum of it upraised hand to swipe at Mike’s unguarded torso. It knocked Mike aside with a powerful smack, threw him across the playground where he hit the slide and crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

“Mike!” Asher screamed, but the creature was turning back on him, raising his arm again. Asher cringed, covered his face with his hands.

“Hey!” Ben shouted, hitting the bars of the burning climbing frame with the driver to get its attention. He was bait. Might as well act like it. “Isn’t it me you want?”

The thing paused, arm still held high. Slowly it turned his head, its weird, slit-pupil eyes sliding towards him.

Ben went cold under its gaze in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. He swallowed thickly and straightened his back. He could do this.

“Yeah. Me. I’ve got all the tasty missing memories.” Ben hit the climbing frame again. “Did I mention that it was my idea to burn your trophies?”

Ben wasn’t sure if it was the taunting or just the fact that the monster just really, really wanted to eat him, but it came to its feet slowly, purposefully. Ben’s chest tightened and his whole body flushed. It felt like a panic attack was coming on, but Ben shoved that feeling away. 

“Yeah, come on. Come at me.” He took a couple of steps back, towards the water to draw it away from Mike and Asher. The creature followed, its eyes fixed on Ben. It chittered evilly. 

Behind the monster, Asher, no longer the focus of its attention, scrambled to his feet and hurried over to Mike. The creature noticed the movement and started to look in that direction. 

“Hey!” Ben hit the climbing frame again.

The creature whipped his head back to Ben. 

“How’s the poker feel?” Ben gestured at his own shoulder. “Couldn’t get it out, huh?”

The creature glanced down at its own shoulder. The damage looked worse on the front. The skin where the point of the poker stuck out over its left pec was torn and bubbly and raw, and the wound was bleeding sluggishly. Its left arm dangled uselessly at its side; it hadn’t lifted it once. Mike had really done the number on it, and Ben hoped that it would be enough of a handicap for them to come out on top.

The creature raised its eyes to Ben again; it actually looked insulted, like it knew Ben was taunting it. 

Ben smirked, feeling reckless and strangely powerful. He’d insulted a lake monster. That was kind of bad ass. He wondered if this was what Tony Stark felt like when he was mouthing off at the bad guys.

“Iron’s not your thing, huh?”

The creature chittered, and Ben had the distinct impression that it was swearing at him. It took a step towards him, yellow eyes aglow, and for a brief second Ben felt a little fuzzy, almost like he had a few hours ago when the creature had him in his thrall, but the feeling slipped away as quickly as it had come.

Ben blinked and shook his head. The creature chittered. It sounded a lot like frustration, and crap, it had just tried to hypnotize him again. But it didn’t because…

“The iron’s blocking your mojo, isn’t?” Ben grinned. This taunting thing was kind of fun. “Sucks to be you.”

Behind the creature, Asher was patting Mike’s face, the nine iron in one hand, and Mike groaned. The creature was turning again, distracted. 

“Hey! I’m talking to you!” Ben shouted and whapped the climbing frame as hard as he could.

This time, the creature turned back to him, and the noise he made wasn’t evil chittering, it was a low, throaty growl. And that was it; it was done with Ben. Ben could see it in its eyes. 

The creature came at him, everything from the gleam of its white shark teeth to the slide and bunch of the muscles in its thighs radiating menace. Ben’s chest was tightening again with the threat of a panic attack, and he wanted nothing more than to bolt, but he stood his ground. He didn’t want to get too close to the water and give the monster the advantage of its natural element; Mike and Asher would need solid ground for their attack, and in no way did he want to feel the icy lake water closing over his head.

Ben widened his stance and raised the driver in his hand like a baseball bat, but the monster was on him with a sudden burst of speed, and its arm went back-

Ben blinked, found himself looking up at the sky, confused. His ears were ringing. His breath was gone out of him and his lungs ached in its absence. His face throbbed and stung. Ben blinked again and wondered why his body hurt so badly.

A hand closed around his ankle, claws pricking the skin of his leg.

It was then that the shock of getting slapped to the ground by a giant lake creature wore off, because holy crap, he was getting dragged to the water like Barry had been the night before. Ben twisted and scrabbled, trying to get purchase. His chest heaved in vain as he tried to get some air in. His shirt rode up and the ground and all its plants and twigs and rocks scraped along his back. He was flying high on adrenaline, so at least he didn’t really register the pain, but panic had its grip on him now, its bitter, acrid taste flooding his mouth. 

In a minute the creature was going to get him into the water, and that was it. He’d be dead. Dead, dead, dead. Just like the changelings had tried to make him. Just like the things in the warehouse, the guy with the British accent-

The cold water touched his skin, and Ben was deluged in memories. 

The scrambled eggs pushed onto his plate came first, then the engine and the sun on the back of his neck. Then the guy out in the yard, raking leaves, and the rumbly, deep voice in the living room, asking him if he shouldn’t be in bed. The black car under the tarp in the garage and the smell of motor oil and leather. Dean sitting on the back steps, a beer in his hand, peering up at Ben with a hand over his eyes to shade them from the afternoon light, a little half smile on his face, and Dean in the stands at his baseball game, cheering him on-

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that the thing had stopped, that his back was still on solid ground, but he was wet now, too. There were claws digging into his chest, pinning him in place, and the icy lake water was sloshing against his sides, over his legs, splashing against his face and clogging his ears. The creature was hurt and it was hungry, and Ben had the tastiest loss in these parts, and it was going to feast instead of retreat because the other boys just weren’t enough of a concern to drive it deeper into the lake.

But all of that was background noise, just little details that filtered in from the world above and slipped away the deeper Ben was pulled down into his past. His memories were like water, and he was drowning; they rose up over him, closing over his head and suffocating him, and the creature plucked them away one by one, ripping them out by the very roots-

_Listening while Dean explained his math homework in a way that actually made sense._

_Nodding while he hunkered down in the empty garage with his mom’s cellphone, while Dean told him to fess up to his mom over breaking the heirloom vase that had belonged to his grandma._

_Fleeing upstairs when Dean and his mom both sent him to his room after he tricked Dean into coming home._

_Running in the warehouse behind Dean, his mom whimpering in his arms…._

There were no words for the pain of it, the incoherent agony, searing and sharp, and from that strange twilight place that Ben had once known as the real world, he felt the creature’s mouth, its sharp shark teeth biting into the flesh of his arm, seasoned now just right with all of Ben’s losses.

After that, blackness.

***

At first, the real world came back in fragments, like an image in a broken mirror:

The golf club arcing down. The meaty sound of iron meeting flesh. The feeling of hands on him, dragging him away from something cold and sloshy. The shift of Mike’s back as he brought the nine iron down on the creature’s head again and again, black blood flying. Something warm around him, a voice speaking incomprehensibly in his ears. The grunt and huff of the others, the whispered drag of the creature’s body on shore. The acrid smell of lighter fluid. The whoosh of flames as the body of the creature caught fire. 

At some point true awareness returned, though the world felt unreal and insubstantial. He could hear his own voice, words just spilling from him, _I had it, I had it,_ and _It was right there, I had it,_ and _I remembered. I remembered_. There were arms around him, warm and tight as he shivered, and something over him, fabric of some kind.

“But I lost it again. It’s gone now. It’s gone.” The words kept coming out of him, and his body wouldn’t stop shaking. His toes, he couldn’t feel his toes, so numb with cold, but he could feel was his shoulder, burning and throbbing from the creature’s bite.

“I know.” It was Scott. It was Scott’s voice in his ear, and it was his arms wrapped around him as he shivered. “I know. I’m sorry, Ben. I’m sorry.”

He saw Mike and Asher standing over the burning corpse like victors. The flames burned a strange green color, and an awful scent like copper and motor oil and the darkness of a warehouse where no light shone drifted on the wind.

Barry came over and squatted nearby. “He okay?” he asked, peering at Ben like he was an anomaly of nature, something he could never understand.

“I don’t know,” Scott said as he held Ben close and pressed something against the bite on his shoulder.

Overhead, the heavy clouds suddenly split apart, and the bright rays of the morning sun burst over the surface of the lake.


	4. Chapter 4

They entered the emergency room bloody and bedraggled. 

Harold was on his feet but wobbly, pale from pain and blood loss. Mike and Asher were on each side of him, holding him up. Both boys were battered and dirty, moving slow and careful. Barry had a towel tied around his ankle and a twin clinging to each of his hands. Ben had no idea what he looked like himself. His shoulder still throbbed and had already bled through the bed sheet Scott had torn up and wrapped around his arm. His face stung, one eye already swelling closed. His whole body ached, and he was cold and empty in a way he’d never felt before. 

Scott marched up to the front desk. “We need medical attention,” he told the nurse on duty. “And then I need to see someone from the local law enforcement. We took care of the lake monster no one bothered to warn us about.” 

No one batted an eye at that, like maybe they really had known about the lake monster, and everyone was immediately taken back and fixed up under Scott’s watchful, merciless eye.

It was pretty bad ass. If Ben didn’t feel so dead inside, he would have been impressed.

Ben was poked and prodded, his shoulder stitched and bandaged, the cuts of the thing’s claws on his chest and ankle wrapped. The word shock was used, and someone gave him a shot of something that made him feel light and floaty.

“The good stuff,” Scott said with a pathetic attempt to smile.

At some point, he was put in a room with a window that looked out at the side of another building. He was in the pediatric ward, and though the room he was in was not private, the other bed was empty. The nurse put something or another on the TV, but there was a cheerful _Wizard of Oz_ mural on the wall that was way more interesting. Dorothy and her group of body-part challenged friends were skipping towards the Emerald City. There was the Yellow Brick Road and the field of poppies. Toto danced around at his mistress’s feet. 

Ben stared at it, tracing the black outlining of the figures with his eyes.

At some point, Scott came in. He sat in the chair next to Ben’s bed and started talking. He talked about how he had been so worried when they went to get everyone up and found the boys missing. He talked about how he and Barry had gone after them when the twins had confessed what they were up to, and how terrified he’d been when he had seen Ben in the water with the creature over him. But he had arrived in time to see Mike take a chunk out of the creature’s skull with the nine, and he had gone to Ben immediately to drag him out of the water. Ben had been screaming, apparently, and Scott had been so scared, and he was so sorry, so, so sorry he had made Ben come on this trip.

“It’s okay, Scott,” Ben said, because Scott seemed to need it, and Ben really needed him to shut up.

Then Scott had given him a fleeting smile and told him that his mom was on her way and that he and Barry were going to take Asher and Mike and the twins to get some lunch. He would be back soon. Was that okay?

Ben nodded. Nothing sounded better than to be alone right now.

Scott left. Ben stared at the Emerald City on the fake horizon. There Dorothy and her friends would find the Wizard, and the Wizard would give everyone what they missing – a heart, a brain, courage, a way home. That seemed so significant somehow; he wished the drugs weren’t making him feel so fuzzy.

“We’re sorry.”

Ben looked over, and there were the twins standing beside his bed in matching green polo shirts that for some reason made him think of car engines. 

“Why?” he asked.

“’Cause you lost stuff you wanted to keep,” Jake said.

“But don’t worry,” Owen added. “Even though some of its gone forever, there’s some left, and you’ll get it back one day.”

“Get what back?” Ben asked. 

“Oh,” said Owen, “You’ll see.”

And though Ben wanted to push for more, to get a little more clarification on what exactly Ben would get back, Barry swept in, his ankle bandaged. He was wearing a green polo to match his kids’.

“There you are, boys!” he said, his false cheer firmly back in place. “Come on, let’s go get lunch and let Ben sleep.”

And then he ushered the twins out, chattering on about fries and shakes. The boys looked over their shoulders at Ben as they went, their looks grim and, and if Ben weren’t mistaken, somehow pitying.

Ben settled back into his bed and found his eyes drawn to the mural on the wall again. He stared at it until his eyes drifted closed. He slept for the rest of the afternoon, oblivious to the two men who came to stand at his bedside for only a few minutes before leaving again.

Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t have remembered them, anyway.

***

Dean grumbled about having to put on the suit as usually did, but the sharp edges that Sam had been listening to for the past year had faded from his words, and Sam couldn’t be bothered to drum up the usual annoyance. The Mark was gone and with it the under-the-skin harshness of Dean’s every word and action. Maybe that had come at a price and maybe there were worse things coming, but he had his brother back, and he was so relieved that all the little things that usually drove Sam crazy were now just white noise in the background of his relief.

“This wouldn’t be necessary if someone would just talk to us,” Dean said, fiddling with his tie as he and Sam stepped off the elevator.

“Well, maybe the new victims will,” Sam said, steering them towards the nurse’s station. “It sounds like they’re tourists.” 

Sam tried to sound hopeful, but his heart really wasn’t in it. This had been a frustrating case. They had already spent three days at and around the lake, finding absolutely nothing but empty public areas and suspiciously nonchalant reactions to the drownings. The number of deaths had climbed into the double digits in the past three months, but the sheriff was insisting that it was just a bad year for that kind of thing. Everyone else acted like the drownings were just par the course, more tourists at the lake and all, no need to be alarmed. It was almost as if there was a town-wide conspiracy to cover it up, and Sam would scoff at that notion except that he and Dean had seen it before.

Their only lead since arriving had come from a guy at the Gas-N-Sip the night before, an older guy with crazy eyes and a name tag that read Sal. He’d given them the creepy horror movie exposition act from the other side of the gas pump, warning them that they might not want to go down by the lake this year.

“Yeah?” Dean had asked while the pump ticked away. “Why’s that?”

“Lots of drownings,” he’d told them, eyes alight with inappropriate glee. “ _Suspicious_ drownings. My granny, well, she ain’t always right in the head, but she’s from the old country and she figures it’s grindylow. Don’t want to mess a grindylow. Nasty piece of work, a grindylow.”

He was like a caricature out of a Stephen King novel, but Sam couldn’t really blow him off. He and Dean had been thinking angry ghost, but a grindylow was a good possibility. 

“If it is a grindylow, we’ve got a problem,” Sam had said when they were back out on the road.

“Yeah. Tell me about it,” was Dean’s grim reply.

Grindylows weren’t the small, simple creatures of British mythology that that grabbed small children with their long, spindly arms and drowned them. Grindylows were more along the lines of a Wendigo, huge and fierce, but way more powerful and a hell of a lot smarter. His father had gone on a hunt for a grindylow once when Sam was sixteen. He and six other hunters had gone after it, and he’d even refused to let Dean go when it had been the norm to take Dean on every hunt back then to teach him the ropes. They came back three people short and all beat to hell, and Sam had held off his attitude for a few days because the look in his Dad’s eyes…. Well, no other hunt had ever left John Winchester quite so haunted.

He and Dean had been on the verge of trying some other avenues of information that morning when the police scanner had spit out something about tourists and an attack at the lake, and they pulled out the Fed suits with the hope of talking to the victims before they had time to rework their memories of the situation into a near drowning or an alligator attack or whatever. 

This was their best chance; if it was a grindylow, they needed to confirm it and then figure out the next step. Two hunters weren’t enough for a grindylow hunt.

The nurse’s station was deserted, though Sam could hear murmur of voices in one of the rooms further down the hall, and they kept on walking. They already had the room number, and it was better for them, really, to go in without alerting the staff. No one would stop them from seeing the patient or run interference on what he remembered.

A couple of kids were sitting in some nearby chairs as they passed. One was older, college-aged maybe, leaning his head back against the wall with his eyes closed. The other one was most likely in his mid-teens, and he sat perched uneasily on the edge of his chair, one knee bouncing nervously. Sam noticed them because of their identical boy band hair, and the younger one caught and held Sam eye as he passed, gaping at him in awe.

Sam frowned as they broke eye contact, suddenly uneasy.

“Mike,” the younger kid whispered, unaware of how loud his whispering was. “It’s them.”

“Huh?” the other said sleepily, then sucked in a sharp breath. “Holy shit.”

Next to him, Dean slowed to a stop and gave Sam a questioning look. Sam shrugged, because yeah, he had no idea.

As one they turned back to the boys.

“Uh, can we help you guys?” Sam asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He looked between them, using his best stern law enforcement expression.

“You’re Sam and Dean, aren’t you?” the younger one said, eyes bright with excitement.

The older kid huffed. “ _Asher_.”

“Do we know you guys?” Dean asked, suspicious.

The older kid got to his feet, moving slow and careful, one hand on his side. “I’m Mike Sorenson. This is my brother, Asher. You, uh, you saved us once.”

Sam eyed them both, trying to place them, but Dean snapped and aimed a finger at them. “Wait, Fitchburg, Wisconsin. The shtriga, right?”

The younger kid nodded eagerly. “Yeah. That’s us.”

The shtriga. Sam hadn’t thought about the shtriga in years, but he remembered that case pretty clearly. Dean had beaten himself up pretty badly over that one, finding fault and failure in himself where there was none to be had.

“Wow,” Sam said, unable to hold back the smile. Even Dean looked pleased. There was this tiny little burble of pride to see someone they had saved ten years on, alive and well. It didn’t happen a lot, but when it did, it made all the other crap that had happened to them hurt a little less, reminded them that they had done a lot of good among all the bad. It was even better when they were kids, kids who’d gotten the chance to grow up and have normal lives like these two. “That was like, ten years ago.” 

“Yeah,” the older one said proudly. “I’m in college, and Asher is starting high school this year.”

“So are you guys here for the lake monster?” Asher asked with not an ounce of self-consciousness.

And all that elation of a job well done went out like a light. 

“The lake monster?” Dean said, making the connection at the same time Sam did. These kids had survived a shtriga ten years ago only to be attacked by something else now.

“Yeah,” Mike replied. “Big and green. Sharp teeth, claws, glowing yellow eyes. It tried to lure us into the water and drown us.”

“Damn it, Sam,” Dean said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “It is a grindylow.”

From that description? Yeah it was. Only the worst kind of monsters for the Winchesters. 

“Are you guys okay?” Sam asked. They seemed okay, maybe a little battered now that Sam was looking, but there was no permanent damage if they were sitting out in the hall like this.

“No, man. Not really. I mean, we’re good, me and Asher.” He motioned between himself and his brother. “But not everyone is.”

“What happened?” Dean asked.

“Well,” Mike said, “Harold, our stepdad, always takes us on a yearly fishing trips with his college buddies…”

Mike told them a story about a fight between two of their stepdad’s friends and the one that came up missing. He told them about the weird weather and the screams of the missing friend in the middle of the night, and the monster that almost dragged one of them into the lake. They told them about the psychic twins and the plan they came up with and the creature’s trophy case build on the climbing frame of a playground. They told them about their friend Ben - who by the way, they had once saved from changelings, did they remember him? - playing bait because he had forgotten something really big, and how Mike had beat the thing to death with a nine iron and burned the body afterwards.

“Was that right?” Mike asked, head tilted to the side. “Should we have buried it or something?”

“Not necessarily. You did the right thing by burning it, though.” Sam’s throat was tight. Three teenagers and seven year old twins had taken down a grindylow, and Sam was damned proud. But his ears were ringing and his stomach had bottomed out because he did happen to remember their friend Ben who he and Dean had once saved from changelings.

Beside him, Dean had gone still, his jaw clenched so hard it must be hurting.

“What about your friend Ben?” Sam asked, because he knew Dean couldn’t right now. “Is he okay?”

Mike and Asher shared a loaded look. 

“Yeah,” Mike said, “Physically, anyway. The thing took a bite out of his shoulder, but he’ll recover. He’s sort of weird, though. Like, not really there. The monster really messed with his head.”

Dean was white as a sheet. “What room is he in?”

“Four oh two, but-“

“But what?” Dean snapped.

Both boys flinched. Asher shrank back, taking half a step closer to his brother, but Mike straightened his shoulders and stood his ground, just as Sam would expect of a kid who beat a grindylow to death with a golf club. “I don’t know if you know this, but he doesn’t remember you, not really. And I guess you knew him pretty well at one point?”

Dean tensed up like someone was pulling out his fingernails one by one. “Yeah. I did.”

“Well, something made him forget you. The twins said it was big and bright and had a funny voice, whatever that means.”

Big. Bright. Funny voice. 

Castiel. Right.

Dean’s eyes had gone dark, and he turned away, already heading for the elevator.

“Okay, thanks guys. We’re both really glad you’re all right.” Sam gave them a half-hearted smile. “You guys did good. Really good.”

Mike smiled weakly. “Thanks, but, um, be careful with Ben, okay?” The smile slid away and his eyes darkened. Asher gripped the sleeve of his hoodie, bunching it up between his fingers. “It was bad. The way he was screaming….”

Sam nodded and cleared his throat. “Yeah. We’ll be careful.”

The elevator had arrived with a ding, and Dean was getting on, going up to the fourth floor whether Sam was with him or not.

“Take care,” Sam said and hurried to catch up to his brother, sliding sideways between the doors just before they closed.

Dean was a wall of silence on the ride up. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were unseeing. Dean didn’t need this on top of mass of guilt he had now that the Mark was off, but he was getting it anyway, and Sam was going to make sure he didn’t doing something stupid.

Dean was really good at doing something stupid.

The fourth floor was the pediatric ward, and the room was two doors past the nurse’s station. Sam ignored the _Wizard of Oz_ mural on the wall as they stepped into the room and tried not to think of Charlie, focusing instead on the kid slumped into the pillows, fast asleep.

It was Ben. Older, taller, but definitely Ben.

Dean swore as soon as he saw him, lying there beaten all to hell. The late afternoon sun was falling across the bottom of the bed, reflecting off the white waffled blanket, and the stark brightness highlighted just how much damage he had taken. The right side of his face was bruised and swollen, and one shoulder was wrapped and bound, a little bit of dried blood spotting it. The mother changeling hadn’t had Ben long enough to feed from him, and though Lisa had nearly died, Crowley’s kidnapping hadn’t so much as left a single bruise on Ben, but the grindylow had more than made up for the other two.

Sam kept a little back, giving Dean his moment in as much solitude as he could. He expected Dean to touch him, to pet his hair or take his hand or something. Dean did reach out, hand trembling, but he snatched it back at the last second, clenched it hard at his side.

Sam wasn’t surprised.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Dean muttered, and then a sharp pivot later, he was gone, stalking out of the room.

Sam sighed, and stood a minute more, watching Ben sleep. He had always thought Ben looked a little more like their dad than Dean, but had kept that opinion to himself. He could really see it now that Ben was older, something in the jawline and the shape of the eyes, and wondered idly if he was like John in other ways. If he was, Sam hoped he got all of the good and none of the bad.

“You did good, Ben.” Sam reached out and touched the back of his hand lightly because his brother hadn’t allowed it for himself. “You did really, really good.”

Ben shifted a little in his sleep, but didn’t wake.

Reluctantly, Sam turned, left him there sleeping and oblivious to their visit. Ben had had other people around him now, an uncle whom Mike Sorenson had mentioned and Lisa and probably Mike and Asher now, since facing down grindylows was the kind of thing that can make lifelong friendships. Dean didn’t have anyone but Sam though, and on occasion, Castiel, and right now Dean was Sam’s priority.

Dean wasn’t in the hallway or at the elevator, and it took a little while, but Sam finally found him sitting in the Impala, his hands clenched on steering wheel at 10 and 2 and staring straight ahead.

“You okay?” Sam asked slipping into the passenger’s seat.

Dean gave him one of those smiles, brittle and pained, the kind that said he was anything but. 

“I’m always okay, Sammy,” he said and started the car.

_Liar_ , Sam thought, but let the matter go.


End file.
